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THE VOICE OF 
THE SCHOLAR 



THE VOICE OF 
THE SCHOLAR 



WITH OTHER 

ADDRESSES ON THE PROBLEMS 

OF HIGHER EDUCATION 



David Starr Jordan 

President of 
Leland Stanford Junior Univkrsity 



Paul Elder and Company 
Publishers, San Francisco 
1903 



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THE LIBRAf^Y OF 
CONGRESS, 

Two Copiae Rgqetvets 

'wm i'n mm 



Copyright, 190J 
5y Paul Elder And Company 



The Tomoye Press 
San Francisco 



TO 

ANDREW DICKSON WHITE 

IN 

TOKEN OF ADMIRATION AND 

RESPECT 



The present volume contains a number of addresses 
on educational subjects delivered by the author on 
various occasions within the last five years. Most of 
them were first given to Stanford audiences. Of the 
others, ' ' The University and the Common Man ' ' was 
given at the University of Washington, that on the 
' ' Personality of the University ' ' at the University of 
California, and that on ' ' College Spirit ' ' at the Uni- 
versity of Missouri. That these discourses occasion- 
ally repeat each other or double on the same track is 
explained, if not excused, by the fact that the same 
author, in such cases, is dealing again with the same 
topic. The publishers express their indebtedness to 
the editors and publishers of the Atlantic Monthly, 
the Popular Science Monthly, the Forum, the Cosmo- 
politan Magazine, and the Independent, for the privi- 
lege of reprinting these addresses as published in the 
magazines in question. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 

Page 

I. The Voice of the Scholar - . . . i 

II. The Building of a University . - - 26 

III. An Apology for the American University - 44 

IV. Relative Values in Knowledge - - - 70 
V. Recent Tendencies in College Education - 99 

VI. The Personality of the University - - 122 

VII. The Higher Education of the Business Man - 128 

VIII. A Business Man's Conception of the University 146 

IX. The University and the Common Man - 167 

X. The Woman and the University - - - 191 

XI. The University of the United States - - 212 

XII. College Spirit 225 

XIII. Politics in the Schools 240 

XIV. The Lessons of The Tragedy ... 261 

XV. The Hopes of Japan 269 



THE VOICE OF THE SCHOLAR. 

THE greatest need of popular government is 
the university. The greatest need of higher 
education is democracy. The scholar and 
the man must work together. The free man 
must be a scholar. The scholar must be a man. 

It is not the necessary function of democracy to 
do anything very well. There is nothing in collective 
effort which ensures right action. Its function is to 
develop intelligence and patriotism through doing for 
ourselves all things possible which concern us individ- 
ually or collectively. To take responsibility is the 
surest way to rise to it, but the time may be long and 
errors may be costly. Courage and willingness do 
not guarantee success. Exact knowledge and thor- 
ough training are essential to right results. In these 
regards, democracy is, in the nature of things, defi- 
cient. These the university must contribute. Gov- 
ernment by the people needs its trained and educated 
men more than any other kind of government; for 
while monarchy seeks far and wide for strong men 
and wise to be used as its tools, strength and wisdom 
is the daily life of successful democracy. But dem- 
ocracy is always prone to undervalue wise men, and 



THE VOICE OF THE SCHOLAR 

imagines vainly that it can get along well enough 
without their help. 

On the other hand, the university needs the 
people. In their wants and their uplifting it finds the 
best reason for its existence. ' ' The bath of the peo- 
ple, ' ' which Lincoln said was good for public men, is 
essential to the university. It keeps it in touch with 
life. It holds it to humanity. 

Those who regard higher education as a social > 
ornament, valueless except as a badge for the delight 
of its possessor, and those who regard culture as the 
private perquisite of the elect few, are alike in the 
wrong. The presence of men of culture and training 
raises the value of everything about them. It ensures 
the success of enterprise, the safety of person and 
property, the contact with righteousness of thought 
and action, which is the mainspring of right thought 
and right deed in the future. 

Moreover, if clear thinking with clean living is good 
for the elect few, it is equally good for the mutable 
many. Culture not only raises the man above the 
mass, it turns the masses into men. That the mul- 
titude may imagine themselves men before they hold a 
man's grasp on life, is the grievous danger of democ- 
racy. Here again the university plays its part, 
teaching the relative value of ideals. Under its criti- 
cism men learn that good results are better than good 
intentions, and that they demand a far higher order 
of skill and courage. 



THE VOICE OF THE SCHOLAR 

I heard a man say the other day that the university 
men were not on his side of a certain question. In 
fact, he said, the college men are always on the con- 
trary side on every question. This is probably true 
in the sense he meant ; for it is the province of college 
men to judge intentions and pretenses by ultimate 
results. When the final end, according to the experi- 
ence of human wisdom, is sure to be bad, wise men 
must oppose the beginning. The universities have 
many times stood in opposition to the popular feeling 
of the time, but they have never found their condem- 
nation in the final verdict of history. Only he who has 
studied the affairs of men critically, impartially, coldly, 
can discover the real trend of forces in the movements 
of today. This the university has means to do. It 
does not carry elections, in fact it has seldom tried to 
do so ; for the results of an election play a very small 
part in the evolution of democracy: not to carry 
elections, but rather to carry wisdom to the people, 
that is something worth doing. The words of experi- 
ence which are wasted in the noise of the shoutings 
become potent as the tumult passes by. 

The people suffer many ills in our social order, for 
most of which they alone are responsible. Because 
men are not wise, they know not what to do. In 
ignorance and weakness they find themselves the sport 
of fate, the flotsam of ' ' manifest destiny, ' ' the victims 
of evils that wisdom and virtue instinctively avoid. 

Next to knowing what to do, is the willingness to 



THE VOICE OF THE SCHOLAR 



believe that some one else possesses this knowledge. 
Scepticism as to the existence of skill and intolerance 
toward the possessor of knowledge are common 
features of democracy. This is its vulgar side, the 
disposition to do mean things in a mean way, doubting 
that there exist any better things or better ways of 
doing them. Through this kind of vulgarity, the 
average American is his own physician, healing himself 
with drugs of which he does not even know the name. 
As a result, he suffers half his life from self-inflicted 
poisoning. The American is his own architect, and for 
this reason our cities are filled with buildings in which 
nightmares might house, were it not for their fresh 
paint and smart ornamentation. The American is his 
own statesman, following his own impulses, guided by 
his own prejudices. Thus he fills the land of the free 
with oppression and injustice. When he can no longer 
shut his eyes to the misery he has wrought he falls 
back on his good intentions, casting the blame for his 
blunders on impersonal destiny. 

The sense of personal responsibility and personal 
adequacy which democracy gives is of vital importance 
in the development of man. But it has its bad side as 
well as its good. It is the function of the university 
.to struggle against the bad, day and night, in season 
and out of season, to convert it into the good. That 
vulgarity is free to express itself in our system does 
not exalt vulgarity. In the long run, vulgarity finds 
' its. surest curejn freedom. 



THE VOICE OF THE SCHOLAR 

The people at large even yet do not understand 
nor value knowledge and power. Only those who 
know well and see clearly can do well. Knowledge 
does not flatter nor coddle, and men take to that which 
pleases them. The fact that the majority do not 
believe in knowledge is the reason why the university 
must always be in opposition to prevailing sentiment 
and current action. ' ' When were the good and true 
ever in the majority?" There are not many of those 
who speak and write on public affairs who really care 
for what is just. The interest of most men lies in the 
success of the "cause." But the "cause," what- 
ever it may be, is only an incident in intellectual 
awakening, a mere episode in social development. It 
is in the actual truth that the public weal is bound up. 
No honest or worthy cause appeals to the self-pity of 
those it addresses. All calls to the weakness or vanity 
or prejudice or passion of men are dishonest. All 
dishonesty results in evil. Virtue that can last rests 
on growing honesty and growing wisdom. Because 
the university stands for the free search for truth, its 
influence must be opposed to that of passion and preju- 
dice. It must be above the heats of the hour, and 
therefore in some degree antagonistic to them. Thus 
those who strive on the sands of the arena find the 
university distant and cold. This again is its danger, 
that it shall be cold and distant. Never to ' ' vex at 
the land's ridiculous miserie" was an old ideal of the 
university. It is an ideal long cherished in the great 



THE VOICE OF THE SCHOLAR 

universities of England. But it was never a worthy 
ideal. To exist for the needs of the people is a mis- 
sion worthy of Oxford or Harvard or Berlin. It is 
the final, highest function of all the glorious brother- 
hood of plain life and high thought. 

To keep up wisdom among men is the natural 
function of the university. The need of the times is 
not of men to die for the right, but of men to live for 
it ; not of men to oppose popular feeling nor even 
to rouse the pubhc conscience. Better than this, is to 
train the public thought. What we want is not a 
revival of zeal, even for the cause of righteousness, 
but rather a revival of wisdom. This is followed by 
no chill nor backsliding, while zeal, however well- 
meaning, is subject to ebbs and flows. 

I heard a very rich man say not long ago that he 
had no faith in higher education. ' * Nine college men 
out of every ten, ' ' he said, * ' build up a wall between 
themselves and Hfe. ' ' By life, he seemed to mean the 
business of making money. If this be life, the state- 
ment may be true, but even judged by this standard, 
we must believe that it was an inferior kind of college 
men who thrust themselves upon his notice. Some 
people look upon men as useful only as they can use 
them. The rest are merely competing organisms, poor 
beggars who ought to be got under ground as soon 
as possible, to save the cost of their keep. But it is not 
true that most college men build up a wall between them- 
selves and life. If this has been true in any individual 

6 



THE VOICE OF THE SCHOLAR 

case, it was because the man was not worth educating 
or because the education itself was spurious. For 
higher education cannot make a man where manhood 
did not exist before. It can only take a man already 
created and raise him to higher effectiveness. More- 
over, there are frauds and imitations in education as 
well as anywhere else, and misfit articles are thrown 
on the market, cheap, every day. It is said that ' ' our 
schools which teach young people to talk do not teach 
them how to live." If this is true, it means that some 
schools are shams, not giving real education. But it 
is not by mistakes and misfits that higher education is 
to be judged. It is by its finished and adapted pro- 
duct. In every walk in life the higher education works 
to the benefit of humanity. The man who knows one 
thing well can do it well. His presence in life is a 
help to his neighbor. He does not enter into compe- 
tition, but into elevation. He makes respectable the 
business of living. 

In a recent number of the Atlantic Monthly, Dr. 
William DeWitt Hyde gives a striking account of 
the value of the life work of a single scholar, the 
honored President of Harvard: 

' ' No one can begin to measure the gain to civiliza- 
tion and human happiness his services have wrought. 
His leadership has doubled the rate of educational 
advance not in Harvard alone, but throughout the 
United States. He has sought to extend the helping 
hand of sympathy and appreciation to every struggling 



THE VOICE OF THE SCHOLAR 

capacity in the humblest grammar grade; to stimulate 
it into joyous blossoming under the sunshine of con- 
genial studies throughout the secondary years; to 
bring it to a sturdy and sound maturity in the atmos- 
phere of liberty in college life; and finally, by stern 
selection and thorough specialization, to gather a har- 
vest of experts in all the higher walks of life, on whose 
skill, knowledge, integrity, and self-sacrifice their less 
trained fellows can implicitly rely for higher instruc- 
tion, professional counsel, and public leadership. In 
consequence of these comprehensive forms, we see 
the first beginnings of a rational and universal church, 
not separate from existing sects, but permeating all; 
property rights in all their subtle forms are more 
secure and well defined; hundreds of persons are 
alive today, who, under physicians of inferior train- 
ing, would have died long ago; thousands of college 
students have had quickened within them a keen intel- 
lectual interest, an earnest spiritual purpose, a ' per- 
sonal power in action under responsibility, ' who under 
the old regime would have remained listless and 
indifferent; tens of thousands of boys and girls in 
secondary schools can expand their hearts and minds 
with science and history and the languages of other 
lands, who but for President Eliot would have been 
doomed to the monotonous treadmill of formal studies 
for which they have no aptitude or taste; and, as the 
years go by, hundreds of thousands of the children 
of the poor, in the precious, tender years before their 



THE VOICE OF THE SCHOLAR 

early drafting into lives of drudgery and toil, in place 
of the dry husks of superfluous arithmetic, the thrice- 
threshed straw of unessential grammar and the innu- 
tritions shells of unrememberable geographical details, 
will get some brief glimpse of the wondrous loveliness 
of nature and her laws, some slight touch of inspira- 
tion from the words and deeds of the world's wisest 
and bravest men, to carry with them as a heri- 
tage to brighten their future humble homes and glad- 
den all their afterlives. In such 'good measure, 
pressed down, shaken together, running over,' has 
there been given to this great educational reformer, 
in return for thirty years of generous and steadfast 
service of his university, his fellow men, his country 
and his God, what, in true Puritan simplicity, he calls 
' that finest luxury, to do some perpetual good in the 
world.'" 

Not long since one of our writers expressed regret 
at the numbers of young men sent forth each year 
from the universities to swell the educated proletariat 
of America. His assumption is that each is to scram- 
ble for his living, struggling with his competitors, 
dissatisfied because his ambitions far outrun every 
possible achievement. The very reverse of this is the 
fact in America, whatever may be the case elsewhere, 
as, for instance, under the "bed-ridden officialism of 
France. ' ' The man of character who is educated aright 
with us finds very soon his place in the community. 
Before he came he may not have been wanted, but 



THE VOICE OF THE SCHOLAR 

once in his position, everybody seems looking for 
him. The college men of America need no help and 
no pity from any source. They can take care of 
themselves and they can take care of others. To 
them as to Emerson, "America means opportunity," 
and there are more opportunities today than ever 
before to the man who is able to grasp them. But to 
grasp the greater opportunities, the first essential is 
not to despise the smaller ones. An education that 
turns a man away from any honest work, however 
humble, that lies in the line of duty, is not sound edu- 
cation. That some education is unsound and that some 
men are unmanly in nowise shows that real training 
does not strengthen real men. 

Each year makes higher demands, it is true. 
There are fewer things worth having to be had for the 
simple asking. This is because the nation is growing 
more critical. It is beginning to demand fitness, not 
alone mere willingness. The opportunities it has to 
offer are falling into the hands of trained men, and 
these men demand still higher training from those 
who are to be their successors. 

A skilled engineer will not choose as his assistant 
and successor a man who knows wheels and engines 
only by rule of thumb. An educated chemist will not 
make way for a druggist's clerk; nor a graduate of 
West Point, for a politician's parasite whose military 
training was gained as elevator boy or as driver of a 
beer wagon. Training counts alike in all walks of 



THE VOICE OF THE SCHOLAR 

life, in a democracy not less than in an empire. As the 
people come to understand the reality of knowledge, 
so will they learn to appreciate its worth. 

Another very rich man doubted the value of college 
education; at the same time he placed the highest esti- 
mate on applied chemistry, because through the skill 
of the chemist employed in his steel manufactory, he 
laid the foundations of his own wealth. But applied 
chemistry rests on the broader chemistry not yet 
applied, and is a part of higher knowledge. To train 
chemists is likewise a part of the higher education. 
Higher education consists no longer, as many seem to 
suppose, in writing Latin verses, and reading mythol- 
ogy in Greek. These things have their place, and a 
great place in the history of culture, but it is to 
* ' Greek-minded men and Roman-minded men ' ' that 
they belong. They form no longer the sole avenue 
by which the goal of the scholar can be reached. 

The keynote of the modern university is its use- 
fulness. Its help is no longer limited to one kind of 
man or one kind of ability, cramping or excluding all 
others. It welcomes ' ' every ray of varied genius to 
its hospitable halls." It is its highest pride that no 
man who brings to its classrooms brains and courage 
is ever turned away unhelped. 

Because of this broadening of university ideals, 
there are ten college students in our country today 
where there was one twenty years ago. For this 
reason, the same twenty years has witnessed a marvel- 



THE VOICE OF THE SCHOLAR 

ous expansion in all universities where generous ideals 
have found lodgment. 

Where the old notion that all culture runs in a 
single groove, still obtains; where it is attempted to 
train all men by one process, whatever this process be, 
there is no growth in numbers, no extension of influ- 
ence, no sign of greater abundance of life. Just in 
proportion as constructive individualism in education 
has been a guiding principle, have our universities 
grown in numbers and influence. In this proportion 
and for this reason have they deserved to grow. For 
this reason James Bryce declares that of all results of 
democracy, the American university oflers the largest 
promise for the future. 

The scholar in the true sense is the man or woman 
for whom the schools have done their best. The 
scholar knows some one thing thoroughly and can 
carry out his knowledge into action. With this, he 
must have such knowledge of related subjects and of 
human life as will throw this special knowledge into 
proper perspective. Anything less than this is not 
scholarship. The man with knowledge and no per- 
spective is a crank, a disturber of the peace, who needs 
a guardian to make his knowledge useful. The man 
who has common sense, but no special training, may 
be a fair citizen, but he can exert little influence that 
makes for progress. There may be a wisdom not of 
books, but it can be won by no easy process. To gain 
wisdom or skill, in school or out, is education. To do 



THE VOICE OF THE SCHOLAR 



anything well requires special knowledge, and this is 
scholarship whether attained in the university or in 
the school of life. It is the man who knows that has 
the right to speak. 

That monarchy needs the university has been rec- 
ognized ever since culture began. The universities 
of Europe were founded by the great kings; the wiser 
the king the more he felt the need of scholars as his 
helpers. So Alfred founded Oxford and Charlemagne 
the University of Paris, while the founder of the Uni- 
versity of Berlin well deserved the name of ' ' Great, ' ' 
even though it were for nothing else. In the darkest 
days of Holland, William the Silent erected the Uni- 
versity of Leyden. He needed it in his struggle 
against Spain. He needed it in the warfare for inde- 
pendence. A university breeds free men, men whom 
physical force cannot bind. 

But the need of the monarchy for men of high 
culture and exact training is less than that of the 
democracy. Under a monarchy such men must hold 
office. In a democracy they must hold the people. 
They must form fixed points in the civic mass, units 
of intelligence, not to be bribed nor stampeded. 

The presence of the king is not the essential fea- 
ture of a monarchy. It is the absence of the people. 
Where the people are not consulted, it is not vital to 
the government that they be wise, nor even that wise 
men should be among them. In fact they are more 
easily handled without this kind of obstruction. 

13 



THE VOICE OF THE SCHOLAR 

Therefore the tendency of monarchy is to separate 
the men from the mass, as we may choose the sheep 
from among the goats. But in a democracy, those 
who are ruled must also rule. They have no less 
need of individual wisdom, but they must have it 
-diffused among themselves, not concentrated in a class 
above. Nothing can be done for a democracy save 
what the people do for themselves. It is impossible 
to provide for it an educated oligarchy. Its public 
servants are of its own kind, its agents or its attor- 
neys, in no sense its rulers, not often even its leaders. 
For the most part, therefore, the wisest men in the 
democracy will not be in office. The voice of wisdom 
should rise from the body of the people to the throne 
of power. When a democracy needs a leader in the 
seat of authority, it is because it has gone out of its 
way in one fashion or other. Going out of its way, 
it has come to a crisis. The cause of every crisis, in 
a democracy, is a mistake of one sort or another. A 
crisis arises with a question of right and wrong. Such 
a question never becomes a burning one unless the 
popular feeling has somewhere gone wrong and 
worked itself out in wrong action. 

When this is the case, it is the scholar's business to 
Icnow it. He is the sensitive barometer which first feels 
the lowered pressure of rejected duty, the first warn- 
ing of the coming storm. The warning he gives, his 
neighbors will not receive with favor. He will not 
receive a ' ' donation party ' ' nor a vote of thanks, nor 

14 



THE VOICE OF THE SCHOLAR 

a new pair of boots for giving it expression, but it is 
his business to speak and he cannot remain a scholar 
if he takes refuge in silence. Dr. Norman Bridge 
has well expressed a similar thought in these words: 

"The mere fact that one or two men in a hundred 
are known to be uninfluenced by the clamors of any 
rabble, good or bad, is to any community a force of 
unspeakable value. The excitable ones know well that 
the fiftieth man must be met and conciliated or over- 
come in any hot-headed movement. He is a factor as 
a voter and a citizen that cannot be ignored, and he 
exercises a wholesome, regulating and modifying, 
often repressive influence on the hasty tendencies of 
the crowd. The thieves of the public treasury, of all 
classes and shades, are afraid of him. Even one 
forceful man in a hundred thousand may have an 
amazing influence on public affairs if he has the time 
and inclination to devote to disinterested care of the 
public interests. There are a few such men in each of 
our large cities. In one of the large centers of the 
East a wealthy man of leisure was for many years a 
terror to the hot-headed and the filchers of the public, 
and solely because he gave himself to the task, and 
they knew they would have to meet him at every turn. 
This one man in the multitude may be called a croaker 
or a fossil, but often he is the sole force that is able to 
check the rising of the mob or the stampede of the 
army, or to compel men to stop and think before 
taking action that may be hasty or regretable. ' ' 

IS 



THE VOICE OF THE SCHOLAR 

The scholar will not go far out of his way in mat- 
ters of this kind. Because his knowledge is intense, 
it must be correspondingly narrow. The tendencies 
to good and evil in our social condition are so varied 
and so intertangled, that those who trace out the rela- 
tions of one set of combinations must perforce neglect 
the others. The scholar who raises his voice against 
unjust or unwise taxation may be silent on the ques- 
tion of misapplied charity. The scholar who becomes 
an authority on the purity of water cannot be an equal 
judge of the purity of elections. The expert on elec- 
tricity is not necessarily the best judge of ghost stories. 
He may be so, but we cannot expect it. Each must do 
his own part in his own way, in his own section of the 
field of knowledge. Each must say his own word as 
his own truth comes to him, though he know that his 
own times let it pass unheeded, and though he know 
that his voice be overborne by the louder tones of 
mere pretenders to knowledge. For it is one of the 
conditions of democracy that wisdom and its counter- 
feit go along together side by side. There can be no 
tag or label to mark one from the other, and the people 
would not heed them if there were. We can only 
know wisdom from imposture by its results, or by the 
test of our own wisdom . The government cannot brand 
a Keeley lest the public mistake him for a Faraday. A 
Tesla and a Helmholtz pass as alike great, and for the 
public he is greatest whose name is oftenest in the 
daily newspapers. All this is well. It is better for 

i6 



THE VOICE OF THE SCHOLAR 

men to choose the voice of wisdom for themselves 
rather than to have it infallibly pointed out to them 
by the government. For the seat of wisdom is in 
the individual soul, and it grows through individual 
effort. 

The scholar is silent for the most part in the rush 
and hurry of the world. When he has no reason for 
speaking he reserves his strength for his own due 
season and his own line of action. But he must be 
free to speak when needs arise. He cannot breathe 
in confined air, and his speech or his silence must be 
at his own will, subject to his own conscience and to 
the demands of truth. 

In our days men talk too much, in the papers, in 
the magazines, in the open atmosphere. They fill the 
literary air with vain shoutings. But there can never 
be too clear or too frequent statement of the results 
of real knowledge. The old elementary truths of jus- 
tice and humanity need to be recalled to us day after 
day, while on the other hand the discoveries of science 
give us better tools and surer command over the forces 
of nature. The voice of the oldest and the newest 
must together somehow reach our ears, if our actions 
are to be righteous and our enterprises successful. 

To the scholar we must look for this. Only he 
who knows for himself some truth which rests on the 
foundations of the Universe has a right to the name of 
scholar. And the scholar will speak when the due time 
comes for speaking. Whatever our creeds and con- 

17 



THE VOICE OF THE SCHOLAR 

ventions, he will break through them with the truth. 
He can never afford to do less, if the truth he utters 
be really his own, and the outcome of his own contact 
with the powers that never lie. No authority can bend 
him to silence ; no title can bribe him ; no force can 
close his mouth. He must, if need be, have the spirit 
of the martyr. He must consider, not the conse- 
quences to himself, to his business, to society, — only 
the demands of truth. 

That the scholar must speak, again emphasizes his 
need of common sense. Common sense is that instinct 
which throws all knowledge into right perspective. It 
rests on sound habits of orientation. He who knows 
where the sun rises never fails to make out all the 
other points of the compass. This power the schools 
alone cannot give. They can strengthen it, but they 
cannot create it, and they must not take it away. It 
is the foundation of all true culture, for science is only 
enlightened common sense. 

As a part of common sense, the scholar must dis- 
tinguish his truth from his opinions. He must not 
mistake for the eternal verity his own prejudice, his 
own ambition, or his own desire. For he is human on 
all his human sides and is subject to temptations that 
master other men. He is in better form to resist, no 
doubt, but that does not insure immunity. Moreover, 
his truth may be only half truth at the best, and the 
other half truths may seem to contradict it. To know 
a half truth from a whole one is the part of common 

i8 



THE VOICE OF THE SCHOLAR 

sense. But common sense is a possession still more rare 
than learning. When scholars forget, their voices 
arise in discord, and this discord casts discredit over 
knowledge. When half truths are set off one against 
another, we may find displayed all the vulgarity of 
intolerance in quarters where intolerance should be 
unknown. AH this should teach the scholar modesty. 
It should warn him of the need of charity, but it 
should not silence his voice. 

He must speak, he will speak, and it is for the 
safety of democracy that sooner or later his word is 
triumphant. The final outcome of all action rests with 
the educated man. Not all the politicians of all the 
parties in all the republics have secured so many final 
victories in thought and action as the universities. 

I read lately of an attempt to show that the scholar 
or the clergyman should never write or speak on any 
public or passing question lest he expose himself 
to criticism or find his personality tumbled about in 
the dust of the political arena. The clergyman 
devotes his life to the study of moral questions in the 
light of religion. The scholar devotes himself to 
the study of truth wherever found and of the ways 
by which truth may be available to men. If the 
scholar and the clergyman are to be silent on ques- 
tions of vital interest to men, who indeed is to 
speak? Is it the politician of the day, a mere 
echo without an idea of his own? Is it the man of 
money, who may have an axe to grind in every move- 

'9 



THE VOICE OF THE SCHOLAR 

ment in public affairs, or who again may be seeking 
undisturbed possession of that which justice would 
place in other hands? Is it the popular agitator to 
whom the social order is one long fit of hysteria? 
Must we confine all public utterance to those whose 
passions are excited or whose interests are touched? 
Shall Emerson and Lowell, Theodore Parker and 
Phillips Brooks be silent when the fighting editor 
speaks ? 

The scholar should be above all influences of pas- 
sion or profit. He should speak for the clear, hard, 
unyielding, unflattering, unpitying truth. If he enters 
the arena, he must as a man take his chances with the 
rest. His thoughts must be his only weapon. Passion, 
rhetoric, satire, these are arms for weaker men to use, 
not for the scholar. His only sword is the truth. 
His personal credentials may be challenged. He will 
meet the scorn of men who do not know the truth 
when they see it, and to whom thought seems but a 
puny weapon. More than this, he will meet as adver- 
saries scholars, real or pretended, men who see the 
truth from a single side, or who have never seen it at 
all, yet feign to be its defenders. 

As to all this, the scholar must be patient. If he 
is right, the ages will find him out. If he is wrong, 
the fault is with his own weakness, not with truth. He 
must be loyal to the best he knows, caring no more 
for majorities than the stars do, unshaken by feeling, 
by tradition, or by fear. The voice of the clamorous 



THE VOICE OF THE SCHOLAR 

mob on the one hand is no more to him than the 
dictum of a pope or a king, or all antiquity. Nor is 
it less ; for one or all of these are matters not to be 
taken in evidence when the scholar makes his final 
decision. 

The rabble of today which the scholar has to face is 
not the rabble of yesterday. The axe and the fagot, 
the club and the paving stone have as means of argu- 
ment gone out of date. The weapon of the mob of 
today is mud. When a scholar stands for unwelcome 
truth, the answer of the day is personal abuse. To a 
man the rabble cannot understand are ascribed all the 
vulgar motives of the rabble. His words and his 
teachings are distorted and vulgarized until the multi- 
tude recognize them as brought down to their own 
level. 

In this gloomy outlook, the scholar has two facts 
of consolation. Truth is a statue to which mud can 
never stick. The man without brains is the man with- 
out influence. A little patience and the human storm 
will pass by, the atmosphere will clear, and again, with 
Emerson, the scholar shall behold above him "the 
gods sitting alone on their thrones ; they alone and he 
alone. ' ' 

The university is an association of scholars. It 
stands for the free judgment and the free proclamation 
of truth ; without these it can stand for nothing else. 
But our idea of academic freedom must be cast on 
broad lines. It is the prerogative of high-minded 



THE VOICE OF THE SCHOLAR 

men, men of sound life and mature character, who 
should deal with large issues sanely and seriously. 
We may not dignify by the name of freedom the boy' s 
play of scholarship or the issues of the debating soci- 
ety. The privilege of college instructors to use the 
academic halls as a safe shelter in which to spin 
social cobwebs, or from which to throw epithets at 
tradesmen or corporations, at churches or politicians, 
is now in some quarters called academic freedom. By 
some this is held to be the noblest privilege of the 
scholar. It may indeed be something worth striving 
for, but it is not the freedom for which our academic 
fathers fought. The right to say anything anywhere, 
to any audience, without regard to fitness, truth or 
justice, is not a right of the real scholar in the real 
university. It savors rather of the yellow journalism. 
When unseemly things are done or done on un- 
seemly occasions, they must be judged by society's 
laws of fitness, not by any artificial code of the 
academy. 

"When serious people," says Francis F. Browne, 
' ' set themselves to discussing the principle of Lehr- 
freiheit, they are thinking of something very differ- 
ent. They are thinking of the deliberate attempts 
of obscurantist and reactionary authorities to stifle in- 
tellectual endeavor, and to impede the progress of great 
creative ideas that from time to time transform our 
modes of thought. They are thinking of such things 
as the occasional official efforts made in Germany dur- 



THE VOICE OF THE SCHOLAR 

ing the last century to force all university teaching into 
conformity with the ideas of the monarchy and the 
established church. They are thinking of such things 
as the effort, made so energetically in the generation 
just preceding our own, to deny a hearing to the doc- 
trine of evolution, and to discourage its promulgation 
in the recognized institutions of learning. They are 
thinking of all sorts of attempts to influence or cajole 
or threaten thinkers of achieved reputation, in order 
that the fabric of conventional falsehood may not be 
undermined and totter to its fall. * * * It is 
when we try to imagine a case of this sort that we 
come fully to understand how securely the principle 
of Lehrfreiheit is guarded by the authorities of our 
great universities, and how certainly, should they once 
fail in their trust, would they be forced back into the 
path of duty by the overwhelming pressure of public 
opinion." 

Academic freedom therefore demands personal re- 
sponsibility. There must be degrees in this as well as 
in other sorts of freedom. We say sometimes that 
certain men have the right to be heard. But one thing 
gives this right, and that is the value of what they 
have to say. This may be judged by the soundness 
of their lives and the breadth of their previous expe- 
riences. There can never be perfect freedom for 
children or for fools. On the same principle, the 
academic freedom of the college professor is a thing 
that must be won by merit, not claimed as a privilege. 

23 



THE VOICE OF THE SCHOLAR 

The right to proclaim truth belongs to him who has 
shown that he knows truth when he sees her, and that 
he knows how to find her when he does not see her. 
It cannot exist in full degree for men without experi- 
ence in life, for men who live in a visionary world, for 
men whose ready eloquence takes the place of science. 
The doctors of philosophy turned out in such num- 
bers from the great hot-houses of university culture 
are not always prepared for the freedom a grown man 
must take. Their fitness to speak usually dates from 
the period in which they make the discovery that they 
are not yet ready. It is not the fear of the public, of 
the press, of the rich or of the poor, that should deter 
a young man from rash speaking. It is the fear that 
he may not tell the truth, the fear that he may mislead 
others or bring reproach on himself or his colleagues 
by undue proclamation of his own crudity. The uni- 
versities of the world have shown that they fear neither 
man nor devil, if a struggle for principle is on. But 
this they do fear, that in the multiplicity of speech and 
writing for which they are held responsible, the truth 
shall be lost in the heat of controversy or concealed in 
meshes of eloquence. 

The university must stand for infinite patience and 
the calm discussion of the ideas and ideals which it 
must leave to men of action to frame into deeds. The 
passionate appeal is not part of its function. In order 
that politics shall not creep into the university, the 
men of the university must try not to creep into poli- 

Z4 



THE VOICE OF THE SCHOLAR 

tics. It is not because the university is afraid of re- 
prisals. The politicians cannot hurt it much. It is 
because the university fears degeneration within itself 
if its energies are occupied with temporary ends. There 
can be no greater foe to academic existence, and there- 
fore to academic freedom than the professor who 
makes his chair a center of propaganda of personal 
opinions. Whether these are right or wrong, popular 
or unpopular, makes little difference. The effect is the 
same. The appeal is to prejudice and takes the place 
of investigation. The function of the university in 
public affairs must always be essentially judicial. This 
does not mean that the scholar's voice should be silent 
in times of moral issues. It is now and then the 
scholar's sworn duty to take the great bull of public 
opinion by the horns, regardless of results to himself 
or to the association of scholars he represents. All 
honor to the scholar who recognizes the moment of 
great decision and seizes it, sparing neither himself nor 
others. ' ' Once to every man and nation comes the 
moment to decide." But such moments are not 
matters of every day, and the small battles of society 
must be fought by men of action who enroll them- 
selves under banners which flutter for the hour. 



»S 



II. 

THE BUILDING OF A 
UNIVERSITY. 

WITH the end of our Republic's first century 
we had the first clear vision of the greatest 
of republican institutions — the American 
university. It was even then only a 
vision. It is not yet realized, but we know something 
of what it is to be. Out of the struggles and the 
prayers, the hopes and the efforts of good men and 
good women, we see it taking form. A university as 
fair as those which England has known for a thousand 
years, as sound and as strong as the deep-rooted 
schools of Germany, with something of both, yet 
different from either, is the coming university of 
America. There will be many of these institutions, 
for our land is very wide, and they will differ from 
each other somewhat in kind, and as one star differeth 
from another in glory, — still of the same general 
pattern all must be. They will be schools for training 
American boys and girls to be American men and 
women. They will express the loftiest ideals of higher 
education within our great democracy. One of this 
great sisterhood of universities our own Stanford must 

26 



THE BUILDING OF A UNIVERSITY 

become; hence it is fitting for us, from time to time, 
to consider the present, and to forecast the future. 

The American college, as it existed thirty years 
ago and more, and as it still exists in some quarters, is 
distinctly a school for personal culture. Its strongest 
agency has been the personal influence of devoted 
men. It has made no effort to give professional train- 
ing. It has made no pretense of leading in scientific 
research. A log with Mark Hopkins at one end of it 
and himself at the other was Garfield's conception of 
such a college. Even the log is not essential. The 
earnest teacher is all in all. Apparatus Mark Hop- 
kins did not need, books he even despised. The 
medium of a forgotten language and an outworn phil- 
osophy served him as well as anything else in impress- 
ing on his boys the stamp of his own character. It 
was said of Dr. Nott of Union College that ' ' He took 
the sweepings of other colleges and sent them back to 
society pure gold. ' ' Such was his personal influence 
on young men. A notable example of the college 
spirit was Arnold of Rugby. Another was Jowett, 
Master of Baliol. A teacher of this type, in greater 
or less degree, it was the privilege of every college 
student to know, and this knowledge still reconciles 
him to his alma mater, however many her shortcom- 
ings in subject or method. But times have changed 
since the days of Mark Hopkins. The American 
college — English -born and English in tradition — 
under the touch of German influences, and in 

27 



THE BUILDING OF A UNIVERSITY 

response to actual needs, is changing to the American 
university. It is no longer a school of culture alone, 
a school of personal growth through personal example. 
It is becoming, in addition to this, a school of research, 
a school of power. It stands in the advance guard of 
civilization, responsive not to the truth of tradition 
alone but to the new truth daily and hourly revealed 
in the experience of man. 

In the movement of events the American university 
unites in itself three different functions : that of the 
college, that of the professional school, and that which 
is distinctive of the university. 

The college is now, as ever, a school of culture. 
It aims to make wise, sane, well-rounded men who 
know something of the best that men have thought 
and done in this world, and whose lives will be the 
better for this knowledge. It has not discarded the 
Latin, Greek and Mathematics which were so long the 
chief agents in culture, but it has greatly added to this 
list. It has found that to some minds, at least, better 
results arise from the study of other things. Culture 
is born from rhastery. The mind is strengthened by 
what it can assimilate. It can use only that which 
relates itself to life. We find that Greek-mindedness 
is necessary to receive from the Greek all that this 
noblest of languages is competent to give. We find 
for the average man better educational substance in 
English than in Latin, in the Physical or Natural 
Sciences than in the Calculus. But more important 

28 



THE BUILDING OF A UNIVERSITY 

than this, we find that it is safe in the main to trust 
the choice of studies to the student himself. The 
very fact of choice is in itself an education. It is 
better to choose wrong, sometimes, as we do a hundred 
times in life, than to be arbitrarily directed to the best 
selection. Moreover, so far as culture is concerned, * 
the best teacher is more important than the best study. 
It is still true, as Emerson once wrote to his daughter, 
that ' ' It matters little what your studies are ; it all 
lies in who your teacher is. " A large institution has *> 
many students. It has likewise many teachers ; and 
an Arnold or a Hopkins, a Warner, a Thoburn or a 
Richardson, can come just as close to the students' 
hearts in a large school as in a small one. But ' ' the 
knowing of men by name," the care for their personal 
lives and characters, must be the essential element in 
the new college course, as it was in the old. And the 
college function of the university must not be despised 
or belittled. Because Germany has no colleges, because 
her students go directly from the high school at home 
to the professional school or the university, some 
have urged the abandonment by the American uni- 
versity of this primal function of general culture. In 
their eagerness to develop the advanced work some 
institutions have relegated the college function almost 
solely to tutors without experience, and have left it 
without standards and without serious purpose. It is 
not right that even the freshmen should be poorly 
taught. On the soundness of the college training 

29 



THE BUILDING OF A UNIVERSITY 

everything else must depend. In the long run the 
greatest university will be the one that devotes the 
most care to its undergraduates. With the college 
graduation higher education in England mostly stops. 
With Germany here the higher education begins. 
Higher education has been defined as that training 
which demands that a man should leave home. It 
means a breaking of the leading strings. It means 
the entrance to another atmosphere. The high school 
and the gymnasium cannot have the academic atmos- 
phere, however advanced their studies may be. They 
must reflect the spirit of the town which supports them, 
and of which they are necessarily a part. They cannot 
be free in the sense in which the universities are free. 
A boy who lives at home in a city, and goes back and 
forth on a train, cannot be a university student. He 
may recite in the university classes, but there his rela- 
tion ends. He gets little of the spirit which moves 
outside of the classroom. He cannot enter the uni- 
versity until he breathes the university atmosphere. 
The "Spurstudenten," or " railway students, " those 
who come and go on the trains, are rightly held by 
their fellows in Germany to be little more than Philis- 
tines. Whatever the other excellencies of the German 
system, the gymnasium, or advanced high school, is 
an inadequate substitute for the American college. 

The second function of the university is that of 
professional training. To the man once in the path of 
culture this school adds effectiveness in his chosen 

30 



THE BUILDING OF A UNIVERSITY 

calling. This work the American universities have 
taken up slowly and grudgingly. The demand for 
instruction in law and medicine has been met weakly 
but extensively by private enterprise. The schools 
thus founded have been dependent on the students' 
fees, and on the advertising gain their teachers receive 
through connection with them. Such schools as these 
stand no comparison with the professional schools of 
Germany. Their foundation is precarious, they can- 
not demand high standards, nor look beyond present 
necessities to the future of professional training. Only 
a few of our professional schools today demand uni- 
versity standards. Those which do not cannot share 
the university spirit. They have no part in university 
development. Only in the degree that they are part 
and parcel of the university do they in general deserve 
to live. The first profession to become thus allied is 
that of engineering, thanks to the wisdom that directed 
the Morrill Act. Following this, law, medicine, the- 
ology, education, have, in some quarters, taken a 
university basis, and the few professional schools in 
which such a basis exists rank fairly with the best of 
their class in the world. 

The crowning function of a university is that of 
original research. On this rests the advance of civil- 
ization. From the application of scientific knowledge 
most of the successes of the nineteenth century have 
arisen. It is the first era of science. Behind the 
application of such knowledge rests the acquisition of 

31 



THE BUILDING OF A UNIVERSITY 

it. One Helmholtz, the investigator, is the parent of a 
thousand Edisons, the adapters of the knowledge 
gained by others. The great function of the German 
university is that of instruction through investigation. 
The student begins his work on a narrow space at the 
outer rim of knowledge. It is his duty to carry the 
solid ground a little farther, to drive back, ever so 
little it may be, the darkness of ignorance and mys- 
tery. The real university is a school of research. 
That we possess the university spirit is our only excuse 
that we adopt the university name. A true univer- 
sity is not a collection of colleges. It is not a college 
with an outer fringe of professional schools. It is not 
a cluster of professional schools. It is the association 
of scholars. It is the institution from which in every 
direction blazes the light of original research. Its 
choicest product is ' ' that fanaticism for veracity, ' ' as 
Huxley calls it, that love for truth, without which man 
is but the toy of the elements. Its spirit is the desire 
"to know things as they really are," which is the 
necessary attribute of "him that overcometh." No 
institution can be college, professional school and uni- 
versity all in one, and exercise all these functions fully 
in the four years which form the traditional college 
course. To attempt it is to fail in one way or another. 
We do attempt it and we do fail. In the engi- 
neering courses of today we try to combine in four 
years professional training with research and culture. 
This cannot be done, for while the professional work 



THE BUILDING OF A UNIVERSITY 

is reasonably complete, culture is at a minimum, and 
research crowded to the wall. The subject of law 
requires three solid years for professional training 
alone. Three or four culture years go with this, 
and are surely none too many. The same require- 
ment must soon be made in engineering. We cannot 
rhalse an engineer in four years if we do anything 
else for him, and there are very many things 
besides engineering which go to the making of a real 
engineer. 

But this we can do in the four years of college 
culture: We can show the student the line of his 
professional advancement, and can see him well started 
in its direction before he has taken his first degree. 
We can give in the college course something of the 
methods and results of advanced research. In any 
subject the advanced work has a higher culture value 
than elementary work. Thorough study of one sub- 
ject is more helpful than superficial knowledge of half 
a dozen. To know one thing well is, in Agassiz's 
words, "to have the backbone of culture." By lim- 
iting the range of individual training to a few things 
done thoroughly it is possible to give even to the 
undergraduate some touch of real university method, 
some knowledge of how truth is won. To accomplish 
this is one vital part of the university's duty. It 
welds together the three functions of a university, and 
in so doing it will give the American university its 
most characteristic feature. 



THE BUILDING OF A UNIVERSITY 

The best education for any man with brains and 
character should involve these three elements: 

It should have the final goal in view as soon as 
possible. 

It should be broad enough and thorough enough to 
develop cultured manhood, and at the same time to 
furnish the strength needed to reach this goal. In 
other words, it should look to success in the profession 
and to success as a man. Toward both these ends the 
methods of finding the truth for one's self are vitally- 
essential. The university should disclose the secret 
of power, and this secret lies in thoroughness. Science 
is human experience tested and set in order. The 
advance of science has come through the use of instru- 
ments of precision and methods of precision. Opinion, 
feeling, tradition, plausibility, illusions of whatever 
sort, disappear when the method of power is once 
mastered. 

The college course should have a little of the pro- 
fessional spirit for its guidance, a little of the university 
spirit for its inspiration; the best interests of all three 
will keep them in the closest relation to each other. 
At the same time they must not starve each other. 
At the present time the needs of the college in most 
cases tend to dwarf the more costly functions of the 
university. The professors have their hands full of 
lower work. The books and material the university 
work demand are far more costly than the college can 
afford. The trustees still too often regard the graduate 

34 



THE BUILDING OF A UNIVERSITY 

school as an expensive alien, and its demands in most 
quarters still receive scant attention. To train fifty 
investigators costs more than to give a thousand men 
a college education. The sciences cost more than 
the humanities, and the applied sciences, with their 
vast and changing array of machinery, are most ex- 
pensive of all. 

Equally unwise, it seems to me, though less com- 
mon, is the disposition to slight the college course for 
the sake of advanced research. Poor work, wherever 
done, leaves its mark of poverty. The great univer- 
sity of the future will be the one which does well 
whatever it undertakes, be it high or low. Better 
have few departments, very few, than that any should 
be weak and paltry. Better a few students well taught 
than many neglected. 

It is fair to judge a university by the character of 
its advanced work. Institutions cannot be graded by 
the number in attendance. This is the most frequent 
and most vulgar gage of relative standing. The rank 
of an institution is determined no more by the number 
of its students than by the number of trees on its 
campus. What sort of men does it have, and what 
are they doing? These are the living questions 
Buildings are convenient; beautiful buildings have a 
great culture value. We should be the last to under- 
rate the effect of the charm of cloisters and towers, 
of circles of palms and sweet-toned bells. But these 
do not make a university. Books are useful, they are 

35 



THE BUILDING OF A UNIVERSITY 

vital to research, — but wiser men than we have ever 
known have grown up without books. Shakspere 
had few of them, Lincoln but few. Homer and Jesus 
none at all. Books serve no purpose if they are not 
used. The man who reads it gives the book its life. 
Specimens are inevitable in natural history. Appa- 
ratus is necessary in physical science. Collections and 
equipment are really the outgrowth of the men that 
use them. You cannot order them in advance. Pro- 
fessor Haeckel once said, bitterly, that the results of 
research in the great laboratories were in inverse pro- 
portion to the perfection of their appliances. An 
investigation may be lost in multiplicity of details, or 
in elaboration of preparation. Some men will spend 
years in getting a microscope or a microtome just 
right, and then never use it. It is said that the entire 
outfit of Joseph Leidy, one of the greatest of our 
microscopists, cost just seventy-five dollars. It was 
the man and not the equipment that made his investi- 
gations luminous. 

Publication is necessary, but it would be the great- 
est of mistakes to measure a university by the number 
of pages printed by its members. Much of the so- 
called research, even in Germany, is unworthy of the 
name of science. Its subject matter is not extension 
of human experience, but the addition to human 
pedantry. To count the twists and turns of literary 
eccentricity may have no more intellectual signifi- 
cance than to count the dead leaves in the forest. 

36 



THE BUILDING OF A UNIVERSITY 

Statistical work is justified not by the labor it requires, 
but by the laws it unveils. Elaboration of method 
may conceal the dearth of purpose. Moreover, it is 
easier to string the web of plausibility than to recover 
the lost clue of truth. Of a thousand doctors' theses 
each year, scarcely one in a hundred contains a real 
addition to knowledge. When it does it may be that 
the hand of the master placed it there. In too many 
cases a piece of research is simply a bid for notice. 
American universities are always on the watch for men 
who can do something as it should be done. Work 
is often done solely to arrest the attention of the uni- 
versity authorities. A professorship once gained, 
nothing more is heard of research. The love of nov- 
elty with the itch for writing often passes for the 
power of original research. The fanaticism for verac- 
ity has nothing in common with versatile writing or 
paradoxical cleverness. It took Darwin twenty-five 
years of the severest work before he could get his own 
leave to print his own conclusions. Other writers put 
forth sweeping generalizations as rapidly as their type- 
writers can take them from dictation. In certain 
works which have arrested popular attention, the 
investigations must have gone on at the highest speed 
attainable by the pen of the gifted author. Such work 
justifies Fechner's sarcastic phrase, "Cuckoos' eggs 
laid in the nest of science." 

The work of science is addressed to science, no 
matter if half a dozen generations pass before another 

37 



THE BUILDING OF A UNIVERSITY 

investigator takes up the thread. The science of the 
newspapers is of quite another type, and so is much 
of the science of just now famous men from whom 
newspaper science derives its inspiration. 

While the university on its human side is inter- 
ested in all that touches the life of today, on the 
scientific side it deals with the eternal verities, and 
cares nothing for those things which are merely local 
or timely. 

The university must conduct research to ends of 
power. This it has hardly begun to do in America. 
Half our graduate students are not ready for anything 
worthy to be called investigation. They are not real 
students of a real university. The graduate depart- 
ments of our universities are now engaged almost 
exclusively in training teachers. That profession may 
be the noblest — where noble men make it so, but it is 
only one of many in which success must rest on orig- 
mal investigation. We are proud of our crop of 
Doctors of Philosophy, dozens or hundreds turned 
out every year. But most of them are trained only 
to teach, and we know that half of them are predes- 
tined to failure as college teachers. We must broaden 
our work and widen our sympathies. We must train 
men in the higher effectiveness in every walk in life, 
men of business as well as college instructors, states- 
men as well as linguists, and shipbuilders as well as 
mathematicians, men of action as well as men of 
thought. This means a great deal more than annual 

38 



THE BUILDING OF A UNIVERSITY 

crops of Doctors of Philosophy to scramble for the 
few dozen vacant instructorships open year by year. 
But with all these discouragements original research is 
the loftiest function of the university. In its consum- 
mate excellence is found the motive for its imitation. 

There is but one way in which a university can 
discharge this function. It cannot give prizes for 
research. It cannot stimulate it by means of publica- 
tion, still less by hiring men to come to its walls to 
pursue it. The whole system of fellowships for ad- 
vanced students is on trial, with most of the evidence 
against it. The students paid to study are not the 
ones who do the work. When they are such, they 
would have done the work unpaid. The fellowship 
system tends to turn science into almsgiving, to make 
the promising youth feel that the world owes him a 
living. 

All these plans of university building, and others, 
have been fairly tried in America. There is but one 
that succeeds. Those who do original work will train 
others to do it. Where the teachers are themselves 
original investigators devoted to truth and skilful in 
the search for it ^ men that cannot be frightened, 
fatigued, or discouraged — they will have students 
like themselves. To work under such men students 
like-minded will come from the ends of the earth. It 
is the part of the investigators to make the university, 
as the teachers make the college. There never was a 
genuine university on any other terms. It is not con- 

39 



THE BUILDING OF A UNIVERSITY 

ceivable that there should ever be one. It is not 
necessary that all departments should be equal to 
make the university real. It was enough at Harvard 
to have Agassiz and Gray, Lowell and Longfellow, 
Goodwin and Holmes, to justify the name of univer- 
sity. Silliman and Dana made a university of Yale. 
Such men are as rare as they are choice, and no uni- 
versity faculty was ever yet composed of them alone, 
and none ever yet had too many of them. President 
Gilman has wisely said: 

' ' In the conduct of a university secure the ablest 
men as professors, regardless of all other qualifica- 
tions, excepting those of personal merit and adaptation 
to the chairs that are to be filled. Borrow if you can- 
not enlist. Give them freedom. Give them auxil- 
iaries. Give them liberal support. Encourage them 
to come before the world of science and of letters with 
their publications. Bright students, soon to be men 
of distinction, will be their loyal followers, and the 
world will say Amen. 

' ' The merit of a university depends on the men 
who are called to conduct it, upon them absolutely if 
not exclusively; for although the teacher must have 
such auxiliaries as books and instruments — books are 
nothing but paper and ink until they are read, and 
instruments but brass and glass until craft and skill are 
applied to their handling. ' ' 

But it is in its men that the real university has its 
real being. Through the work of such men it stands 

40 



THE BUILDING OF A UNIVERSITY 

in the vanguard of civilization. By such men it counts 
the milestones in its course, and no trick of organiza- 
tion, no urging of the printing-press, no subsidy of 
students, can be made to take their place. 

A final word as to the practical side of advanced 
research. Mr. Carnegie once ascribed the foundation 
of his great fortune to the fact that he first employed 
trained chemists where other manufacturers chose 
workmen skilled in making steel by rule of thumb. 
His chemists were able to suggest improvements. 
They devised ways of making better steel cheaper 
still, and at the same time of utilizing the refuse or 
slag. 

In the future the success of each great enterprise 
must depend on the improvements it makes. The 
nation successful in manufacture and commerce will be 
the one richest in labor-aiding devices. All these 
must depend on the advancement of knowledge. Pure 
science must precede applied science. 

Once the manufacturer or the nation could hire its 
chemists as it needed them. The few asked for were 
already made. Now they must make them. The 
advancement of any branch of science depends on the 
mastery of what is known before. Everything easy 
and everything inexpensive has been found out. To 
train the chemist of the future we need constantly finer 
instruments of precision for his advanced work, access 
to greater and greater libraries that he may know what 
is already done, for each generation of scientific 

41 



THE BUILDING OF A UNIVERSITY 

workers must stand on the shoulders of those gone 
before, else it can make no progress beyond them. 
The scholars of today would be helpless were it not 
that they can save time by drawing freely on the accu- 
mulated knowledge of the past. 

To learn the elements of any science costs little. 
It can be learned at one end of a log with a great 
teacher on the other. It can be even learned without 
a teacher. But to master a science so as to extend its 
boundaries — this is quite another thing. More than 
a man can earn in a lifetime it costs to make a start. 
For this reason a university which provides means for 
such work is a very costly establishment. For this 
reason the investigator of the future must depend on 
the university. The nation with the best equipped 
universities will furnish the best-trained men. On the 
universities progress in manufactures and commerce 
must depend. Through the superiority of training 
Germany is passing England in the commercial world, 
in spite of her handicaps of position and history. 
Through the excellence of her universities, without 
most of these handicaps, America is likely to excel 
both Germany and England. 

As men of science are needed, they cannot make 
themselves. Those with power can help them. This 
fact has given the impulse to the far-reaching gifts of 
Stanford, Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Rhodes. These 
are not gifts, but investments put to the credit of the 
country's future. The people, too, have power to 



THE BUILDING OF A UNIVERSITY 

give. The same feeling of investment has led them 
to build their state universities, and to entrust to them 
not only the work of personal culture, but of advance- 
ment in literature, science, and arts. With general 
culture and professional training must go the advance- 
ment of knowledge, the progress of society, through 
the advancement of the wisdom and the power of 



43 



III. 

AN APOLOGY FOR 
THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY. 

NOW and then in these days some successful 
business man raises his eyes from his coun- 
ter to question the American university's 
right to exist. " Does higher education 
pay ? " he asks, and from his own experience of tire- 
less energy, and from his own contact with thin- 
legged, white-faced collegians seeking a job, he gives 
to this question a qualified negative. He further 
claims, should he care to pursue the subject at greater 
length, that opportunities for higher education are too 
widely diffused, and that the American masses are vic- 
tims of over-education. 

If all this is true, it is time to call a halt and take 
account of stock. We have invested too much in 
universities — love and devotion, as well as bonds and 
gold — for us to be indifferent to their usefulness. In 
any case, it may be worth our while to spend half an 
hour in considering this question, even though to you 
and me, who are not in success as a life business, 
such statements of men of business may seem belated 
and absurd. 

44 



APOLOGY FOR AMERICAN UNIVERSITY 

It is certain, in the first place, that to speak of 
"over-education" is a misuse of terms. If education 
is rational and effective, there cannot be too much of 
it. It is not men trained and efficient who enter 
into destructive competition. It is the ignorant and 
ineffective who make the struggle for existence so dire 
a battle. Whatever leaves men weak and ineffective 
cannot justly be called education. There is nothing 
more useful than wisdom, nothing more effective than 
training, nothing more practical than sunshine. 
Surely no one can claim that the American people are 
too wise, too skilful, or too enlightened for their own 
good. Yet to give wisdom, skill, and enlightenment 
is the main function of higher education. It cannot 
give brains, courage, and virtue where these qualities 
were wanting before. It cannot make a man, but it 
furnishes the best known means to help a man to make 
himself. The gain through self-building often out- 
weighs in value the original material. It may be more 
important even than the finished product, as effort is a 
greater source of strength and happiness to man than 
final achievement. 

What these critics usually mean to attack is misfit 
education — the training or straining of the memory 
rather than the acquisition of power to think and act. 
They mean that the colleges give schooling rather than 
training. They ' ' teach young people how to talk 
rather than how to live." This is still true to some 
extent, in some places, but the whole tendency of 

45 



APOLOGY FOR AMERICAN UNIVERSITY 

university movement is toward reality and practicality. 
These critics have not watched this movement. They 
do not draw their idea of a university from the power- 
ful, well-organized institutions of the day, which lay 
hold of every various power of humanity and seek to 
draw it into effective, harmonious action. Rather they 
picture to themselves the starveling colleges of their 
youth, where callow boys were driven, against their 
will, over race-courses of study, no part of which ap- 
pealed to their own souls or was related in any way to 
their lives. Such colleges and such ideals of educa- 
tion exist in our time, in certain forgotten corners, but 
they are in no sense typical of the American univer- 
sity of today. Harvard and Cornell, and the great 
and growing state universities of the West, are as 
firmly and thoroughly devoted to the needs of Ameri- 
can democracy as the modern harvester is to the 
needs of the American wheat fields. 

No doubt inferior methods, dull, stupid traditions, 
can be found here and there under the name of higher 
education, as rusty or worn-out machinery exists 
under the name of agricultural implements. It is not 
by these that the best we have should be judged. No 
one knows better than our college authorities the mis- 
fits and failures of education. No one strives half so 
hard to prevent them, though in all large enterprises 
no one can avoid a certain percentage of failure. 

Not all the critics in business life taken together 
have done one-tenth as much to make education prac- 

46 



APOLOGY FOR AMERICAN UNIVERSITY 

tical as has any one of the great university presidents 
of our time. Let us mention, for example, Eliot and 
White and Angell and Tappan. Under the hands of 
these men, and others like these, the whole face of 
higher education in America has changed in the 
last twenty years, and the change has been in every 
way toward greater usefulness and practicality. As 
the limited express of today compares with the cross- 
roads accommodation train, so does the American 
university we all know, or ought to know, compare 
with the college of twenty years ago. The little cur- 
riculum of the college, its Latin verses, mythology, 
mathematics, and dilute philosophy covered but a 
small arc in the grand circle. The entire range of the 
activities of men constitutes the field of the university. 
The keynote of railroad progress has been useful- 
ness to the traveling public. The limited express 
carries well, carries quickly, carries comfortably, accu- 
rately, and safely the multitudes of people who 
demand transportation. Its fresher paint, handsomer 
cars, and softer cushions are only incidental to this. 
So with the university of today. It aims to meet the 
needs of all men, whatever these needs may be, and 
of all women, too — all to whom higher training or 
higher outlook is possible. It meets these needs accu- 
rately, safely, and without waste of time or effort. Its 
greater size and greater impressiveness of buildings, 
libraries, and laboratories are only incidents. Its 
purpose is direct, practical, and unflinching. Those 

47 



APOLOGY FOR AMERICAN UNIVERSITY 

who criticise its results must take a broad view of its 
purposes. Because a Harvard man once drove a street- 
car in San Francisco, or because some despondent 
invalid from Yale is seeking a third-class clerkship, is 
no indictment of Harvard or Yale any more than a 
chance tramp on a brake-beam is an impeachment of 
the management of a great railroad. 

If the passengers in general rode on the brake- 
beams in preference to the coaches, it might give rise 
to an indictment. If the Harvard man of today can- 
not, as a rule, make use of his knowledge, if he cannot 
take care of himself and open the door of opportunity 
to others — if the more of Harvard the less of man — 
then we may question Harvard' s right to her endow- 
ments. But, as a matter of fact, this is not true. 
Among men in every walk of life, among our bridge 
builders, our preachers, and our mechanics, our teach- 
ers, our statesmen, and our naturalists, our bookmen, 
our physicians, our financiers, our electricians, our 
lawyers, and our journalists, the university men stand 
everywhere at the front. They are effective, enlight- 
ened, practical. They have had some one thing 
clearly in view; they have striven to do it, and to do 
it so well that their work needs no after-patching. 

It is true that this has not always been so to the 
degree that it is today. Once the college educa- 
tion was not related to life. It did not pretend to be. 
It had nothing to do with action. It was not even the 
foundation of scholarship. The scholars of the early 

4S 



APOLOGY FOR AMERICAN UNIVERSITY 

days were as much self-taught as the merchants. The 
school training was discipline only, a drill in memory 
and discrimination, the things memorized and the 
things studied to be forgotten when real life began. 
The original investigator — that is, the real scholar, in 
any field, in language even — had to begin at the bot- 
tom when his college course was finished. He had to 
find his own materials, devise his own methods, and 
forge his own implements, just as the self-taught 
scholar had to do. The man with definite purposes 
saw his way to his goal outside of college, for the col- 
lege would not swerve from its mediaeval English 
ideals a hair's breadth to meet the need of the student. 

Learning breeds vanity, some one has said; while 
wisdom is the parent of modesty. The old-time col- 
lege student had learning. He learned rules by heart, 
and lists of exceptions. He learned the propositions 
of Euclid, and could repeat every corollary by num- 
ber. If he studied science, this too was made a matter 
of names, definition, and exceptions. The best bot- 
anist was the one who knew the most Latin names of 
plants. The best historian knew the names and dates 
of most kings and the details of the greatest number 
of campaigns. 

The college education was once valued for the 
feeling of superiority which it engendered. The 
bachelor of arts was as good as the best of men and 
better than most. "Of all horned cattle," said 
Horace Greeley, " commend me to the college grad- 

49 



APOLOGY FOR AMERICAN UNIVERSITY 

uate." He meant the kind which is filled with learn- 
ing, with a fatuous vanity, which sprouted like the 
calf's horns. If we define an educated man as one 
who has learned the secret of power in nature or life, 
he is not classified with horned cattle. He becomes a 
man, and to send forth such is the work of the uni- 
versity of today. 

It is said by some one that the greatest joy on earth 
with certain women — greater even than the pleasures 
of hope and even the consolations of religion — is the 
' ' well-dressed feeling. ' ' We know what this is like 
and how it affects its possessor, even though we do not 
share it ourselves. I saw an example the other day 
on a railway train. A lady, not graceful nor gracious 
nor beautiful, was dressed to her own perfect satis- 
faction. 1 could not describe the details, which had 
no special charm for me, but the aggregate was the 
sure feeling of being well dressed. This showed itself 
in the expression of her face, at once haughty and 
beatific. The college degree of Bachelor of Arts con- 
ferred on our fathers the well-dressed feeling. They 
were at once haughty and beatific in the possession of 
it, and to gain the degree, not to enter into the gath- 
ered store of intellectual power, was their purpose in 
running over the prescribed curriculum. 

But whatever we may say of outworn methods, 
they were not without their successes. In these the 
old college found ample justification. Mental keen- 
ness follows mental friction. The spirit of comradery 

5° 



APOLOGY FOR AMERICAN UNIVERSITY 

led to a higher spirit of friendliness and mutual help. 
The debating society, where alone — outside of school 
hours — real subjects were under discussion, laid the 
foundation of many a statesman's prominence on the 
floor of the senate. 

To spend four formative years in life not sordid 
has a moral reflex on the character. The weakest and 
most illogical college course may be far better than no 
college training at all. Men can make up for lost 
time. It is harder to make up for lost inspiration. 
The American college of the past was a feeble copy 
of the colleges of England. The American university 
of today draws its inspiration from the deeper, stronger 
currents of German scholarship. 

An Oxford man has recently criticised the splendid 
aggregation of great boarding-schools, which modern 
needs are slowly and reluctantly molding into Oxford 
University. "Our men," he says, " are not schol- 
ars; our scholars not men." The old ideals of educa- 
tion still cherished at Oxford too often lead to this. 
Those called scholars — the dig, the grind, the 
pedant — are not men. Their worth is not related to 
life, and they are not trained for living. The other 
class — the athletes, the good fellows, the robust Brit- 
ish gentlemen — these are not scholars. For the lines 
of thought and action which interest the live man are 
not yet reckoned as scholarship m England. 

To know nature, life, art, one must go outside the 
tripos or three sacred pedestals of learning — Latin, 

SI 



APOLOGY FOR AMERICAN UNIVERSITY 

Greek, mathematics ^ recognized by the conventional 
college. To the university of Germany we go, or to 
the university of America, and in these institutions of 
reality every man in search of wisdom or power will 
find his efforts strengthened, his success hastened. 
The ideal of the American university of today is ex- 
pressed in the words constructive individuality. It 
would build up scholarship and character, but always 
on the basis of the powers which nature gave the indi- 
vidual. It is no abstract or ideal man with which it 
deals, but real men, just as they are, the individuals 
as created — no two alike, each with his own divine 
gift of personality, which separates the man that is 
from all the men that are, or were, or ever will be, 

I have used the words ' ' college ' ' and ' ' univer- 
sity" in an interchangeable sense. This I have done 
on purpose, for I do not believe that the distinction, 
which seems to exist, and on which some writers have 
laid great emphasis, is one which can or ought to be 
permanent. From the extension of the college the 
American university has sprung, but every one of 
these institutions still includes, and must include, the 
college, which is the germ. Every successful college 
points toward the university, and, so far as is possible, 
it strives to become such. The university is the expres- 
sion of thoroughness of training, and without thor- 
oughness in something no institution can live. 

It is said that the college is for the average man, 
the university for the exceptional one. But this is not 

5^ 



APOLOGY FOR AMERICAN UNIVERSITY 

true, as a matter of fact. The average man, the 
exceptional man, and the man below the average are 
found in all institutions. The "• bemoostes Haiipt,'" 
the moss-grown head, grown gray in the struggle for 
a degree, is well known in the universities of Ger- 
many, while the smallest college of the prairies has 
been the cherishing mother of many a distinguished 
scholar. 

The fact is that the college is a temporary feature 
of American educational history. The college is a 
small university, antiquated, belated, arrested, starved, 
as the case may be, but with university aspirations to 
be realized in such degree as it can. The strongest of 
these find an assured place by the side of the univer- 
sities — Brown University and Amherst College, Wes- 
leyan University and Williams College, Colgate 
University and Bryn Mawr College. These belong 
to a single general class, and differ only in name. 
Each gives the best and broadest undergraduate 
courses its finances afford, with as extended a course 
in graduate study as circumstances make possible. 
Harvard is the same in kind, though its extension is 
greater, while the ambition of the college of the 
prairies is not less nor different. 

As time goes on, the college will disappear in fact, 
if not in name. The best and richest colleges will 
become universities, following the example of Har- 
vard, Yale, and Princeton. The others will return to 
their jjlaces as academies, fitting men for college, as 

S3 



APOLOGY FOR AMERICAN UNIVERSITY 

they now try to fit them for the university. Every 
year shows both these forms of transition. In the last 
ten years at least a half dozen of the California col- 
leges have joined the ranks of the high schools, ceas- 
ing to grant academic degrees. In other western 
and southern States the same change has taken place. 
On the other hand, twenty institutions, which have 
prided themselves on their contentment as ' ' mere col- 
leges, ' ' have reached out, in one way or another, into 
graduate work, and many rest their best fame on the 
influence of some teacher whose originality and thor- 
oughness gave his work the true university character. 

Since Eliot became president of Harvard Univer- 
sity, the number of college students in the United 
States has increased perhaps a hundred - fold. This 
is due to no educational fad, no passing whim of 
the hour. Young men and young women do not rush 
by thousands to the universities every fall because they 
seek social recognition, because their fathers went to 
college, because they need a college degree in their 
business, because of the glory of the football team, 
nor for any one of a hundred side reasons which might 
be conjured up. They go to the university because 
the university offers training which they want, and 
which they cannot do without, except at a cost which 
will narrow and cramp their whole after lives. 

The student of today is far more advanced in 
thought and action than the student of thirty years 
ago. The graduate of Harvard under any of Eliot's 

54 



APOLOGY FOR AMERICAN UNIVERSITY 

predecessors could barely enter the freshman class 
in the Harvard of today. Not that he had not studied 
enough things or spent time enough on them, but 
because the work of earlier times lacked thorough- 
ness, breadth, and vitality. In one or two narrow 
lines some great teacher might make his work thor- 
ough and real, but that a student should actually know 
anything so as to be able to make a place in life by 
means of such knowledge, was to most of Eliot's pre- 
decessors a new and dangerous notion. 

This condition of things was changed, not by out- 
side criticism, the chance slurs of men of business or 
men of leisure, but by inside growth. 

It was thirty years ago that Agassiz told his asso- 
ciates that Harvard was no university — ' ' only a 
respectable high school where they taught the dregs 
of learning." He recognized that for most men the 
sacred tripos was not the foundation of culture, but 
the dregs of culture. Its place of importance was 
assigned, not by hope, but by tradition. It was the 
same good old Harvard which Emerson blamed for 
never having led him to the tree of life. But even 
Emerson was appalled when the study of realities in- 
vaded Harvard College, and men began to give 
themselves not to ideal and tradition, but to serious 
preparation for the work of life. Once he hinted that 
"a check-rein should be placed on the enthusiastic 
young professor who was responsible ' ' for the destruc- 
tion of Harvard's time-honored symmetry. 

55 



APOLOGY FOR AMERICAN UNIVERSITY 

In Agassiz's answer we touch the keynote of uni- 
versity progress — not to check the current of effort 
for symmetry's sake, but to stimulate all possible 
forms of intellectual growth. "If symmetry is to be 
obtained by cutting down the most vigorous growth, ' ' 
he said, ' ' it would be better to have a little irregularity 
here and there." 

It is thirty years since Herbert Spencer startled 
the English educational world by his question : ' ' What 
knowledge is most worth ? ' ' For the men of Oxford 
and Cambridge did not value knowledge for its worth, 
but rather for its traditional respectability. They de- 
fined a university as "a place where nothing useful is 
taught," and they had only contempt for "bread- 
and-butter learning," or knowledge related to daily 
life. This might do for the learned professions — 
law, medicine, and theology — but even for these the 
college gave no hint of direct preparation. Herbert 
Spencer answered his own question in favor of science, 
the facts and laws of human life and of external 
nature. These have a real worth to man, which the 
sacred tripos did not possess. On the belief that 
knowledge of all kinds has real worth to some one the 
modern university rests. 

At Champaign, ten years ago, I had occasion 
to say: "The university should be the great refuge 
hut on the ultimate boundaries of knowledge from 
which daily and weekly adventurous bands set forth 
on voyages of discovery. It should be the Uper- 

56 



APOLOGY FOR AMERICAN UNIVERSITY 



navik from which polar travelers draw their sup- 
plies. As the shoreless sea of the unknown meets 
us on every side, the same house of refuge and 
supply will serve for a thousand different exploring 
parties moving out in every direction into the infinite 
ocean. After countless ages of education and scien- 
tific progress, the true university will stand on the 
verge, its walls still washed by the same unending 
sea, the boundless ocean of possible human knowl- 
edge." 

The college of the past dealt chiefly with record 
and tradition. It sought no new truth and coveted no 
action. The college life was a period of restful growth, 
to be cherished for its fragrant memories. It was not 
a time of forceful struggle for heightened power and 
deeper wisdom. 

The university of today is alert to all the problems 
of social and political development. The poorhouse, 
the jail, the caucus, the legislature, the army, the dis- 
cordant demands of freedom and order, — all these 
call for closest attention of the university student. 
While one man studies the law of heredity as shown 
in the structure of the body cells, another gives equal 
attention to the fate of the tramp and the pauper. 
One spends his strength on the economical transfer- 
ence of electric force while another works on the 
conservation of honesty in the public service. There 
are just as many classical scholars today as there ever 
were, but they no longer bar the way to men of other 

57 



APOLOGY FOR AMERICAN UNIVERSITY 

powers and other tastes. The classics no longer close 
the door to other forms of culture. He who writes 
Latin verses still finds his place in the university, pro- 
vided only that his verses are good enough to be worth 
writing. But he no longer occupies the sole place of 
honor, or even the front seat in the lecture hall. The 
man who knows the steam engine has an equal place 
in the university and an equal share in the honors of 
scholarship. With the advent of realities, spurious 
honors disappear. It is not for the university to 
decide on the relative values of knowledge. Each 
man makes his own market, controlled by his own 
standards. It is for the university to see that all 
standards are honest, that all work is genuine. To do 
this, it must cast off many of its own shams of the 
past. Its titles and privileges, its prizes and honors, 
its distinctions and degrees, its caps and gowns, and 
chaplets of laurel berries — all the playthings and mil- 
linery of its youth it must cast away with its full 
maturity. These prizes of learning are but baby toys 
to the man of power. To send forth men of power 
the university exists. 

The value of the university has been under discus- 
sion ever since the days of Alfred and Charlemagne, 
and each nation in each century has formed its own 
answer. Its value to a monarchy is not the same as 
its worth to a republic. Its value to the all-embracing 
church is not the same as its use to the individual man. 
and woman. The church looks to the university for 

58 



APOLOGY FOR AMERICAN UNIVERSITY 

its defender and its apologist; the individual man for 
his own enlightenment and strength. The king looks 
to the university for agents and advisers, to democ- 
racy for the antidote to the demagogue and spoilsman. 
Emperor William is reported to have said : "Bis- 
marck and von Moltke were but the tools by which 
my august grandfather worked his will." To furnish 
the emperor with tools of such edge and temper is 
the function of the imperial university. Tools of a 
still more august ruler are the statesmen of America. 
Our Washingtons and Lincolns, our Sumners and 
Hoars, our Lowells and Emersons — all these are the 
tools by which the people of the Republic work their 
will. 

To such needs the modern university is fully alive. 
Edward Everett Hale tells us that in i860, when 
Robert Todd Lincoln entered Harvard College, bring- 
ing letters of introduction from Abraham Lincoln and 
Stephen A. Douglass, there was but one man in Har- 
vard who had ever heard of Lincoln. This was Pro- 
fessor James Russell Lowell, who said at the time: 
"I suppose that I am the only man in this room who 
has ever heard of this Abraham Lincoln, but he is 
the person with whom Douglass has been traveling up 
and down in Illinois, canvassing the state in their new 
western fashion as representatives of the two parties, 
each of them being the candidate for the vacant seat 
in the senate." 

That Harvard was not long indifferent to what 

59 



APOLOGY FOR AMERICAN UNIVERSITY 

Abraham Lincoln stood for is shown by the roll of 
names in her Memorial Hall; the list of 

those whose faith and truth 
On war's true touchstone rang true metah 

Once awakened to her public duty, our great univer- 
sity has never since slept. Her hand is in all public 
affairs. Whatever is well done is permeated by her 
wisdom and zeal, and the courage and force of her 
sister institutions. 

One can count on his fingers today, taking every 
one, university men without public office or likelihood 
of any, investigators and professors, who exert a 
greater influence in any political crisis than presidents 
and cabinets, than orators and agitators, than admirals 
and generals. The immediate responsibility for action 
rests with the temporary official, but behind the inves- 
tigator is the power of eternal truth. Whatever men 
do or say or pretend, it is the truth that has the last 
word. This is so sure in the affairs of men that when 
truth appears plain before them they throw up their 
idle weapons and call her God or fate. And these, 
indeed, are other names for truth. For the worship 
of truth the university must stand, and there is but 
one lormula for her ritual. He shall seek her pa- 
tiently, untiringly. If perchance he find her, then 
shall he proclaim her without fear and without reserve. 

The American university serves the American 
republic in several ways. 

60 



APOLOGY FOR AMERICAN UNIVERSITY 

It intensifies individual force and effort. It takes 
a man's best abilities and raises them to the second or 
third or tenth power, as we say in algebra. The value 
of the college-bred engineer is recognized in the rail- 
roads, in the mines, in the factories. With the same 
willingness to work as the man who has learned 
engineering by rule of thumb, he has a far greater 
adaptability, a far wider command of resources. This 
fact may not appear in a day or a year ; hence some 
men prefer the ordinary practical man, because he is 
less ambitious and can be had cheap. Sooner or later, 
however, a condition arises which shows the difference. 
The wise employer forecasts this and puts the respon- 
sibility on the man who is surest to carry it when the 
real trial comes. 

What is true of the educated engineer is equally 
true in other trades or professions. The ignorant 
physician makes money because he deals with ignorant 
men, and the grave covers his blunders. But sooner 
or later truth turns her searchlight on pretense, and 
the educated physician and the fraudulent healer are 
no longer in competition. 

The university of today has no new mission in 
these regards. Its purpose has simply broadened 
year by year till it covers the needs of every man 
with brams and conscience. Not only for the Greek- 
minded and Roman-minded men, but for the men of 
dynamos and sewer trenches, the breeders of sheep 
and the importers of silks ; for the singer of songs and 

6i 



APOLOGY FOR AMERICAN UNIVERSITY 

the writer of histories; for all men, of whatever call- 
ing, the university has its word of welcome, its touch 
of power. 

The university should give to each man or woman 
a broader outlook on the world, the horizon of the 
scholar. No one has the right to the name of scholar 
till he knows some one thing thoroughly, and enough 
of other things to place this special knowledge in 
right perspective. The more deeply one enters into 
his own thoughts, the more effective he is in accom- 
plishing his own ends. The more broadly he enters 
into the thoughts of others, the more clearly will he 
understand his own relation to nature and society. 

Through the medium of the university the student 
is brought face to face with great thoughts and great 
problems. The wise men of all ages and all climes 
become his brothers, and the consolations of philos- 
ophy to him are not meaningless words, but living 
and helpful realities. 

The university is a source of personal acquaint- 
ance with the men and women who shall mold the 
times to come. The university "gathers every ray 
of varied genius to its hospitable halls, by their con- 
centrated fires to strike the heart of youth in flame. ' ' 
Each university has some great teacher, at least some 
one who is relatively great. A great teacher leaves a 
great mark on every student whose life he touches. 
In my own education nothing meant so much to me 
as the contact with a few great men whom I knew face 

62 



APOLOGY FOR AMERICAN UNIVERSITY 

to face. Of these I place first Agassiz, with his 
abounding life, his fearless trust in God and man, and 
his vital interest in everything that God or man had 
done. "There is no hope for you," says Thoreau, 
' ' unless this bit of sod under your feet is the best for 
you in this world, in any world." Of such robust 
optimism was the spirit of Agassiz. No obstacle 
could break his courage, no failure could dim his 
faith. To feel the influence and to share the help of 
such men far outweighs the cost of any college course, 
even though the college gave nothing else. 

But there were many more among my teachers, 
each great in his degree. I cannot take the time to 
speak of each in turn, nor would it profit you to 
listen. Two names may suffice: Andrew Dickson 
White, the former high-minded and enlightened presi- 
dent of Cornell, the ideal of our class, the pioneer 
class of his administration in the new university of his 
hands. To us he embodied all that a scholar should 
be in the life of the Republic. And such an ideal of 
the scholar in statesmanship President White remains 
to us today. 

The other name is that of James Russell Lowell. 
I can hardly claim him as my teacher, for he did not 
know me by name or face. I was too young and too 
raw in his day to be knowable. Yet his rich voice and 
manly figure are indelibly fixed in my memory, and 
his noble face rises before me whenever I try to think 
of the duty of the scholar in the crises of the day. 

63 



APOLOGY FOR AMERICAN UNIVERSITY 

' ' Once to every man and nation comes the moment 
to decide," and to have known Lowell brings a pledge 
for at least a conscientious decision. 

But it is not alone through the teachers that the 
university educates. The ' ' fellow feeling among free 
spirits," which has been called the essence of the 
German university, arises among the students as well. 
Among the college students are the best young men 
and women of our time. They shape each other's 
characters and mold each other's work. If the uni- 
versity does nothing else, it finds its justification in the 
friendships which it gives. In Agassiz's eulogy on his 
friend and helper, Humboldt, he gives a most striking 
account of the influence picked men exert upon each 
other. Teachers and students alike in the University 
of Munich used to gather in Agassiz's own chamber, 
' ' museum, laboratory, library, bedroom, dining-room, 
fencing-room, all in one." Students and professors 
called it ' ' the little academy. ' ' 

Here they worked and talked and thought, and 
the discovery of one became the property of all, with 
the same cheerful generosity by which they shared 
their meals and their earnings. In the college you 
find the men you trust in after life, and one who does 
not fail you there will never after give you cause for 
regret. 

To the university we must look for the promotion 
of true democracy. Its function as a part of public 
education is to break up the masses that they may be 

64 



APOLOGY FOR AMERICAN UNIVERSITY 

masses no more, but living men and women; to draw 
forth from the multitude the man. The mass is the 
real (oe of democracy, for the slave in all ages has 
woven his own lash. Where men are driven or sold 
like sheep, there the tyrant rules. It matters not 
whether the tyrant be a king in velvet and satin, or a 
ward boss in a slouch-hat and striped waistcoat ; when 
individual intelligence does not rule, men are gov- 
erned by brute force. 

The function of democracy, as I have said many 
times, is not good government. Its effect is to stimu- 
late the people to broader outlook, to deeper interest 
in public affairs. It is not to make good government, 
but to make good citizens, that public affairs are con- 
fided to the common man. The feeling of caste is 
fatal to democracy. The fundamental tenet of civil 
freedom is equality before the law. In other relations 
it matters not what inequality develops; the more un- 
likeness among men the better, because the more 
varied the power and talents. But unlikeness is not 
inequality. As "God is no respecter of persons," 
so the law must not be. The state must show no 
favoritism. It knows no black nor white, no wise nor 
simple, no bond nor free. If it place one class above 
another, it is a democracy no longer, and it is not a 
democracy when any class of men tamely accept an 
inferior place as theirs by right of birth. 

The old education seemed to accentuate the ine- 
qualities among men. This was because it took its tra- 

65 



APOLOGY FOR AMERICAN UNIVERSITY 

ditions from aristocratic England, though its real effect 
was to promote democracy. The great service of the 
state university, the cap-sheaf of the public school 
system, is that it carries the university into democracy 
without impairing the essential qualities of either. It 
furnishes a plain way for every student, the highest as 
well as the lowest, from the commonest schooling to 
the training that gives the highest power. So long as 
the grass does not grow in ' ' the path from the farm- 
house to the university," to borrow Ian MacLaren's 
phrase, so long is the Republic safe. So long as the 
people can become enlightened and wise, rich and 
poor alike, so long shall government of the people, 
by the people, and for the people endure upon the 
earth. 

The need of democracy makes a special demand 
upon the scholar. ' ' Eternal vigilance is the price of 
liberty," and to the scholar on his watch-tower the 
people look for this vigilance. It is the scholar's duty 
everywhere, in season and out of season, to uphold 
the sacredness of truth. He must possess, to quote 
Huxley's words, "some knowledge, to the certainty 
of which authority could add or take away neither one 
jot nor tittle, and to which the tradition of a thousand 
years is but as the hearsay of yesterday. ' ' The truth 
it is the scholar's privilege to speak, his duty to pro- 
claim, and that he does this is the best justification of 
the university from which he drew his inspiration. 

"Above all sects is truth." Above all parties and 
66 



APOLOGY FOR AMERICAN UNIVERSITY 

conventions, above all pride and prejudice and passion, 
arise the teachings of nature, the lessons of human 
experience. To hear these teachings, to learn these 
lessons, is the function of the university. To pro- 
claim them wisely is the function of the scholar, and 
it is his mission to help permeate the Republic with 
his scholarship. The university must place as fixed 
beacons in the swaying tides of democracy those men 
and women who can never be moved by feeble cur- 
rents, who know what to do, who have the will to do 
it and the courage to abide the consequences. 

And now, in a final word, I touch the university's 
highest value. There is no good in a man's work 
unless the man himself be good. The highest force 
of the university lies in its moral training. Not in its 
precepts and in its sermons, not by ceremonies and 
formulae, are men influenced for good. If they were, 
moral culture would be the easiest of all teaching. 
Nothing costs less than words. But the experience 
of the ages shows that words count for little in mat- 
ters like this. It is the contagion of high thought, of 
noble purpose, of lofty deed that ' ' strikes the heart 
of youth in flame. " " Science, ' ' says William Lowe 
Bryan, ' ' knows no source of life but life. If virtue 
and integrity are to be propagated, it must be by 
people who possess them. If this child world about 
us that we know and love is to grow up into righteous 
manhood and womanhood, it must see how righteous- 
ness looks when it is lived. That this may be so, 

67 



APOLOGY FOR AMERICAN UNIVERSITY 

what task have we but to garrison our state with men 
and women? If we can do that, if we can have in 
every square mile of our country a man or woman 
whose total influence is a civilizing- power, we shall 
get from our educational system all that it can give or 
all that we can desire. ' ' 

Wisdom, as I have said elsewhere, is knowing 
what to do next. Virtue is doing it, and religion is 
the heart-impulse that finds reason for wisdom and 
virtue in harmony with the first cause at the heart of 
things. To these matters the university can never be 
indiflerent. Wisdom, virtue and religion alike it is 
its province to cultivate and intensify. It can accept 
no shams in wisdom, still less in virtue or in religion; 
but a life without these is the greatest sham of all. 
The university cannot promote virtue and piety in any 
machine fashion. If the college stand in loco parentis, 
with rod in hand and spy-glasses on its nose, it will not 
do much for moral training. It will not make young 
men moral nor religious by enforced attendance at 
church or at prayer-meeting. It will not awaken the 
spiritual element in their natures by any system of 
demerit marks. This the college of our fathers in 
English fashion tried to do, and with such ill success 
that the university of today bears among the ignorant 
the reproach of godlessness. 

What the university can do is along manly 
lines. It can cure the boy of petty vices and 
childish trickery by making him a man, by giving 

68 



APOLOGY FOR AMERICAN UNIVERSITY 

him higher ideals, more serious views of life. It 
may win by inspiration, not by fear. It must 
strengthen the student in his search for truth. It 
must encourage manliness in him through the putting 
away of childish things. Let the thoughts of the stu- 
dent be as free as air. Let him prove all things, and 
he will hold fast to that which is good. Give him a 
message to speak to others, and when he leaves the 
university you need not fear for him, not the world, 
nor the flesh, nor the devil. 

The universities of America have grown enor- 
mously in wealth and power within the last twenty- 
five years. The next twenty-five years will tell the 
same story. They have the confidence of the people 
because they deserve its confidence, and the good 
citizens of the Republic must give them trust and sup- 
port. In the university, at last, the history of democ- 
racy must be written. 



69 



IV. 

RELATIVE VALUES IN 
KNOWLEDGE. 

IT IS now forty years since Herbert Spencer 
startled the educational world with this momen- 
tous question, "What knowledge is of most 
worth?" And the schoolmen of that day in 
England and America were thrown into dismay by the 
question and its implication. For to many of them 
the idea had never occurred that any knowledge had 
any worth whatever. The value of higher education 
in their eyes was mainly that of class distinction. It 
marked out its possessor as one above the common 
mass. It was the badge of having done "the proper 
thing." It conferred for life upon the men who 
received it the same satisfaction which is ascribed to 
the "well-dressed feeling" among women. To dem- 
onstrate its excellence required no analysis of its com- 
ponent parts. For it was prescribed by the highest 
authority known to the average Englishman, the au- 
thority which has granted him the blessings of royalty, 
of nobility, of ecclesiasticism — the authority of tra- 
dition. And over higher education in England forty 
years ago tradition exercised undisputed sway. The 

70 



RELATIVE VALUES IN KNOWLEDGE 

badges of higher education were then of two sorts — 
the pass badge, which conveyed social prestige only, 
and the honor badge, which guaranteed intellectual 
precedence, as none could bear it save after the se- 
verest competitive struggles. Whether these struggles 
were in themselves worthy, whether the senior wran- 
gler had fought for anything of value to himself or to 
any one else, few people gave themselves the trouble to 
inquire. The honor of wrangling was its own reward. 

But these few who did inquire led the intellectual 
progress of the nation, and to their thoughts and 
questionings the epoch-making essay of Herbert 
Spencer gave voice. "What knowledge is of most 
worth ? ' ' That knowledge may have intrinsic value, 
Mr. Spencer insists. If this be true, the value of 
some knowledge is greater than that of some other. 
Furthermore, as life is short, and force is limited, the 
useful knowledge should take precedence over the 
less useful, the real over the conventional, the effective 
over the ornamental. 

It is clear that the knowledge is of most worth 
which can be most directly wrought into the fabric of 
our lives. That discipline is most valuable which will 
best serve us in " quietly unfolding our own individ- 
ualities. ' ' 

Thus far no standard had been agreed upon in 
these regards, nor did those who had the affairs of 
higher education in charge recognize even the pos- 
sible existence of such a standard. To substitute a 

71 



RELATIVE VALUES IN KNOWLEDGE 



rational curriculum for a traditional one, it is neces- 
sary, Mr. Spencer maintained, to consider all these 
matters soberly. "We must settle which things it 
concerns us most to know; or to use a word of 
Bacon's, now unfortunately obsolete, — we must de- 
termine the relative value of knowledges. ' ' 

There are some forms of learning which can lead 
to no generalizations, and can have no bearings, direct 
or indirect, on the affairs of life. The study of old 
coins is given by Spencer as an illustration of this. 
Perhaps better examples could be drawn from our 
ordinary courses of study. 

Other forms of learning directly influence life. It 
is the tendency of all knowledge to pass over into 
action, for a thought is not completed until it is 
wrought into deed. Therefore, that education which 
leads men to better deeds is a gain to the individual 
and to the community. It is well for the individual 
and the community to give heed to this matter. We 
should not merely think that a form of education is 
good, trusting to tradition or to chance opinion. We 
should know what it really signifies, and we should 
not pass by the problem because its solution is not 
easy. No social function or act is so important as 
education. In the schools of today the history, per- 
sonal, social and political, of the future is in large 
part written. Therefore, no good thing is so desir- 
able as good schools, no reform so far-reaching as 
reform in education. 

7z 



RELATIVE VALUES IN KNOWLEDGE 

Mr. Spencer proceeds to ' ' classify in the order of 
their importance the leading kinds of activity which 
constitute human life. These may be naturally 
arranged into: i. Those activities which directly 
minister to self-preservation. 2. Those activities 
which, by securing the necessities of life, indirectly 
minister to self-preservation. 3. Those activities 
which have for their end the rearing and discipline 
of offspring. 4. Those activities which are involved 
in the maintenance of proper social and political rela- 
tions. 5. Those miscellaneous activities which make 
up the leisure part of life devoted to the gratification 
of the tastes and feelings. ' ' 

These categories of effort are thus arranged, Mr. 
Spencer claims, in something like their true order of 
subordination. It is evident that without personal 
sanity and safety, there can be no care for others. It 
is clear that the development of the family precedes 
that of the state, and that the performance of per- 
sonal duties in general has first claim over the 
enjoyment of art and the cultivation of the pleas- 
ures of leisure. It is again evident that "acquire- 
ment of any kind has two values — value as knowl- 
edge and value as discipline, ' ' and both these values 
must be considered in estimating their final influence 
on conduct. 

In the matter of self-preservation, the common 
animal instincts are sufiicient to warn us against the 
grosser dangers. But the less evident evils are not 

73 



RELATIVE VALUES IN KNOWLEDGE 

the less real, and against many of these natural in- 
stinct offers no protection. This is especially true of 
the dangers which arise from the complexities of social 
life, into which our gregarious impulses tend to drag 
us, for with most men the instinct to follow the mass 
is more powerful than the animal mstincts of warning. 
The evils of bad food, bad air, of the use of stimu- 
lants and narcotics, of dissipation and vice, are mat- 
ters which an educated will ought to help us to avoid. 
On all sides we find chronic ailment or physical weak- 
ness which wisdom should have prevented. Hence 
our education should strive to give wisdom. Weari- 
ness, gloom, waste, ill health, due to avoidable causes, 
are met everywhere about us, yet against these our 
system of education provides no adequate safeguard. 

"Is it not clear, ' ' says Mr. Spencer, ' ' that the 
physical sins, partly our forefathers' and partly our 
own, which produce this ill health deduct more from 
complete living than anything else?" Besides the de- 
terioration of life, we have the shortening of existence. 
"If we call to mind how far the average duration of 
life falls below the possible duration, we see how 
immense is the loss. When to the numerous partial 
deductions which bad health entails, we add this great 
final deduction, it results that ordinarily more than 
one-half of life is thrown away." 

From this Mr. Spencer concludes ' ' that, as vigor- 
ous health and its accompanying high spirits are 
larger elements of happiness than any other things 

74 



RELATIVE VALUES IN KNOWLEDGE 

whatsoever, the teaching how to maintain them is a 
teaching that should yield in moment to no other 
whatever. ' ' 

In this connection we may note that it is not merely 
the rules of hygiene which are needed. It is such a 
knowledge of the laws of bodily life as will enable the 
student to develop his own rules of health. Hygiene 
is applied physiology, but the physiology must come 
first else it cannot be intelligently applied. The edu- 
cated man should be placed in position to realize that 
a science of physiology exists and that whatever is 
done to the body has its certain inevitable effect. We 
would not have "every man his own physician," but 
we would give every man such a basis of scientific 
knowledge and method that he could regulate his own 
life safely and such that in critical cases he could rec- 
ognize the presence of scientific knowledge in others. 
He should have the training which would enable him 
to tell a physician from a quack. 

Most people, even those called educated, fail to 
realize that there is such a thing as science or that 
their own ignorance of law is not so good as some 
other man's wisdom. A little real knowledge of their 
own is needed to give respect for real knowledge. 
Because of the fundamental value to the individual, 
hygiene, with the laws and facts of physiology and 
biology, should have a leading part in any well- 
ordered scheme of education. 

Under the second head come the details of profes- 

75 



RELATIVE VALUES IN KNOWLEDGE 

sional training and of preparation for the special work 
of life. Here again science plays a vastly greater 
part than the sj^ecial activities which at the time of 
Mr. Spencer's essay monopolized higher education in 
England and America. The sacred Tripos of Latin, 
Greek and mathematics touched few matters vital to 
the student's after-life. All practical success in almost 
any of the specialized lines of etfort must stand on a 
foundation of science. Physics, chemistry, biology, 
mechanics, rest at the base of all the great industries. 
Yet the universities made scanty provision for these 
subjects, and those who sought them were forced to 
devote most of their time to artificial or irrelevant 
studies which they did not want. All this involved a 
great waste, and the waste was twofold. Science grew 
up outside of the university and lacked what the uni- 
versity alone could give. The practical men of science 
were self-taught and therefore imperfectly taught. 
They missed the university culture, its breadth and 
severity of discipline, and they were likely to miss at 
the same time the essence of science, the method of 
patient investigation. The habit of snap judgment 
and the method of the rule of thumb condemned most 
of them to mediocrity. Here and there some strug- 
gling genius, some Faraday or Huxley, was able to 
rise to the height of the university-trained men of 
science of Germany. But these cases were excep- 
tional. Men of science in general were deprived of 
the university training they needed, because the uni- 

76 



RELATIVE VALUES IN KNOWLEDGE 



versity was given to play rather than to work, to con- 
ventionalities rather than to realities. 

On the other hand, the man trained in the univer- 
sity came into professional or scientific studies too late 
for the best results. To acquire skill with the micro- 
scope or scalpel, one must get at it betimes. It is too 
late to wait till he has mastered the classics of Greece 
and Rome. So with skill in chemical experiment and 
physical manipulation. The student must have hand 
and eye and brain alert before the formative period of 
youth is over. He must keep in touch with his future 
career throughout his university course if this course 
is to be a real help in life. 

It is surely a mistake to have any great break in 
the continuity of education. The sooner one knows 
what he is good for and strikes out for it the better, 
though he rarely regrets the length or the fulness of 
his preparation after his career is once decided. The 
chosen career gives a clue through the labyrinth of 
knowledge. It does not matter how long the way if 
all the while he has a clue to follow. The ability to 
see one's way to realities through a multitude of non- 
essentials is the basis of personal success. 

The first relation of the child to external things is 
expressed in this: What can I do with it? What is 
its relation to me? The sensation goes over into 
thought, the thought into action. Thus the impres- 
sion of the object is built into the little universe of the 
mind. The object and the action it implies are closely 

77 



RELATIVE VALUES IN KNOWLEDGE 

associated. As more objects are apprehended, more 
complex relations arise, but the primal condition 
remains, What can I do with it? Sensation, thought, 
action — this is the natural sequence of each com- 
pleted mental process. As volition passes over into 
action, so does science into art, knowledge into power, 
wisdom into virtue. 

By the study of realities wisdom is built up. In 
the relations of objects he can touch and move, the 
child comes to find the Hmitations of his powers, the 
laws which govern phenomena, and to which his 
actions must be in obedience. So long as he deals 
with realities, these laws stand in their proper relation. 
"So simple, so natural, so true," says Agassiz. 
"This is the charm of dealing with nature herself. 
She brings us back to absolute truth so often as we 
wander. ' ' 

So long as a child is led from one reality to 
another, never lost in words or in abstractions, so 
long this natural relation remains. What is it to me ? 
is the basis of personal virtue. What can I do with 
it? is the beginning of wisdom. 

It is the function of science to find out the real 
nature of the universe. Its purpose is to eliminate 
the personal equation and the human equation in 
statements of truth. By methods of precision in 
thought and instruments of precision in observation, 
it seeks to make our knowledge of the small, the dis- 
tant, the invisible, the mysterious, as accurate as our 

78 



RELATIVE VALUES IN KNOWLEDGE 

knowledge of the common things men have handled 
for ages. It seeks to make our knowledge of com- 
mon things exact and precise, that exactness and pre- 
cision may be translated into action. The ultimate 
end of science, as well as its initial impulse, is the 
regulation of human conduct. To make right action 
possible and prevalent is the function of science. The 
' ' world as it is " is its province. In proportion as 
our actions conform to the conditions of the world as 
it is, do we find the world beautiful, glorious, divine. 
The truth of the world as it is must be the ultimate 
inspiration of art, poetry and religion. The world as 
men have agreed to say it is, is quite another matter. 
The less our children hear of this, the less they will 
have to unlearn in their future development. 

When a child is taken from nature to the schools, 
he is usually brought into an atmosphere of conven- 
tionality. Here he is not to do, but to imitate; not to 
see, nor to handle, nor to create, but to remember. 
He is, moreover, to remember not his own realities, 
but the written or spoken ideas of others. He is 
dragged through a wilderness of grammar, with thick- 
ets of diacritical marks, into the desert of metaphysics. 
He is taught to do right, not because right action is in 
the nature of things, the nature of himself and the 
things about him, but because he will be punished 
somehow if he does not. 

He is given a medley of words without ideas. He 
is taught declensions and conjugations without number 

79 



RELATIVE VALUES IN KNOWLEDGE 

in his own and other tongues. He learns things easily 
by rote; so his teachers fill him with rote - learning. 
Hence, grammar and language have become stereo- 
typed as teaching, without a thought as to whether undi- 
gested words may or may not be intellectual poison. 
And as the good heart depends upon the good brain, 
undigested ideas become moral poison as well. No one 
can tell how much of the bad morals and worse manners 
of the conventional college boy of the past has been 
due to intellectual dyspepsia from undigested words. 
' ' Sciences can be learned by rote, but wisdom not. ' ' 
This is an old adage, going back to Tristram Shandy. 
By rote one can learn sciences but not science. 

In such manner the child is bound to lose his 
orientation as to the forces which surround him. If 
he does not recover it, he will spend his Hfe in a world 
of mixed fancies and realities. Nonsense will seem 
half truth, and his appreciation of truth will be 
vitiated by lack of clearness of definition — by its 
close relation to nonsense. That this is no slight 
defect, can be shown in every community. There is 
no intellectual craze so absurd as not to have a fol- 
lowing among educated men and women. There is 
no scheme for the renovation of the social order so 
silly that educated men will not invest their money in 
it. There is no medical fraud so shameless that edu- 
cated men will not give it their certificate. There is 
no nonsense so unscientific that men called educated 
will not accept it as science. 

80 



RELATIVE VALUES IN KNOWLEDGE 

It should be a function of the schools to build up 
common sense. Folly should be crowded out of the 
schools. We have furnished costly lunatic asylums 
for its accommodation. That our schools are in a 
degree responsible for current follies, there can be no 
doubt. We have many teachers who have never seen 
a truth in their lives. There are many who have never 
felt the impact of an idea. There are many who have 
lost their own orientation in their youth, and who 
have never since been able to point out the sunrise to 
others. It is no extravagance of language to say that 
diacritical marks lead to the cocaine habit; nor that 
the ethics of metaphysics points the way to the higher 
foolishness. There are many links in the chain of de- 
cadence, but its finger-posts all point downward. 

For the group of activities relating to the family, 
the education of forty years ago made no sort of prep- 
aration. Mr. Spencer imagines some antiquary puz- 
zling over a pile of our school-books and college 
examination questions and trying to derive from them 
the theory of education on which they were based. 
' ' This must have been the curriculum for their celi- 
bates, ' ' we may fancy him concluding. ' * I perceive 
here an elaborate preparation for many things : espe- 
cially for reading the books of extinct nations and of 
coexisting nations (from which indeed it seems clear 
that these people had very little worth reading in 
their own tongue); but I find no reference whatever 
to the bringing up of children. They could not have 

8i 



RELATIVE VALUES IN KNOWLEDGE 

been so absurd as to omit all training for this gravest 
of responsibilities. Evidently, then, this was the 
school course of one of their monastic orders." 

As a result of this lack of knowledge, we have 
thousands of needless deaths in childhood, other thou- 
sands of those who survive feeble and who might have 
been strong — events commonly regarded as misfor- 
tunes, "as a visitation of providence." "Thinking 
after the prevalent chaotic fashion, they assume that 
these evils come without causes : or that the causes 
are supernatural. ' ' Of a piece with the ignorance of 
the basis of physical well-being in the family, is the 
carelessness of its intellectual and moral well-being. 
The unadapted education of the father, the frivolous 
training of the mother, show their natural result in 
neglected or wrongly educated children. The school 
is an adjunct to the home, a continuation of the envi- 
ronment of care which the parents bestow on the 
children. If the home knows no wisdom in its rela- 
tion to the child, the school, which is an outgrowth 
from parental interest, will not do any better. And 
in the education of forty years ago, Mr. Spencer found 
no fitness for the development of wise parenthood. 
There existed no reason why the senior wrangler of 
Oxford should be wiser as a father, or the prize pupil 
of the finishing school happier as a mother, than the 
most illiterate peasant of the English fields. 

Equally inadequate was the training for citizenship. 
Economics as a science had no place in the curriculum. 

82 



RELATIVE VALUES IN KNOWLEDGE 

Questions of justice, administration or jurisprudence 
received little attention in the universities, while in 
the study of history the realities were neglected, and 
the mind was filled with useless names, dates, details 
of wanton battles and the gossip of the idle. "Fa- 
miliarity with court intrigues, plots, usurpations, or 
the like, and with all the personalities accompanying 
them, aids very little in elucidating the principles on 
which national welfare depends. ' ' The great mass of 
so-called historical facts could in no way influence our 
actions in life, could not help us in learning how to 
live completely. Such are "facts from which no con- 
clusions could be drawn, unorganizable facts, and 
therefore facts which can be of no use in establishing 
principles of conduct, which is the chief use of facts. ' ' 
' ' What in history it really concerns us to know is the 
natural history of society," and for this no provision 
was then made in the schools of England, nor were 
the professors of that day acquainted with its precepts 
or in sympathy with its teachings. 

In political and social relations the university 
should be the center of progress. From its re- 
searches should come gain to the individual man, the 
growth of rational democracy. The universities of 
England have been, on the other hand, the centers 
of reaction. They were forty years ago wholly given 
over to mediaevalism. The spirit of caste found in 
them its strongest advocates, and their influence was 
always on the side of larger power for those who 

83 



RELATIVE VALUES IN KNOWLEDGE 

constituted the privileged classes. When this is true, the 
university is not doing its part to make good citizens 
of its students. Nor could it do so where the story 
of the privileged classes constitutes the only history 
with which it tries to deal. 

In the fifth division of human activities, esthetic 
culture and the charms of leisure hours, Mr. Spencer 
finds the current system of education scarcely less 
defective. These matters constitute the flower of edu- 
cation. The florist cultivates the plant for the sake of 
the flower, but he knows that without care of the roots 
and leaves the production of the flower is impossible. 
Just as roots and stem and leaves precede the flower 
and are necessary to it, a flower being a branch 
transformed in the interests of beauty, so must the 
production of healthy civilized life precede esthetic 
culture. 

But the current education aims directly at the 
flower. It neglects the plant for the sake of it. ' ' In 
anxiety for elegance it forgets substance." "Accom- 
plishments, the fine arts, belles-lettres and all those 
things which are the efflorescence of civilization should 
be wholly subordinate to that knowledge and disci- 
pline on which civilization rests." Moreover, "the 
highest art of every kind is based on science, — with- 
out science there can be neither perfect production 
nor full appreciation." "Innate faculty alone will 
not suffice, but must have the aid of organized train- 
ing. Intuition will do much but it will not do all. 

84 



RELATIVE VALUES IN KNOWLEDGE 

Only when genius is married to science can the high- 
est resuhs be produced." 

Thus Mr. Spencer comes to the final answer to his 
question : ' ' What knowledge is of most worth ? ' ' 
And to this question as a whole and to all parts of it 
he finds one answer : ' ' Science. ' ' 

Science is organized knowledge. It should take 
precedence on the one hand over knowledge that is 
disorganized, and on the other over classified informa- 
tion of whatever sort which is merely conventional, 
not resting on the eternal verities, nor pointing the 
way to wiser conduct of life. 

After this rapid survey of Mr. Spencer's position, 
we may raise two inquiries. What change of per- 
spective must we make as a result of forty years of 
activity in education ? Do the keen criticisms of forty 
years ago hold against the work of the American uni- 
versity of today? 

As to the first matter, the point of view seems 
changed in one respect. Throughout his essay Mr. 
Spencer seems to aim at building the ideal curricu- 
lum, the course of study best suited to the develop- 
ment and happiness of the average cultivated man. 
The fact that there are other types of men than the 
average, he seems in some measure to overlook. 
There are some men, for example, who are born to 
minister to the esthetic feelings of others and to these 
alone. There are some men, "Greek-minded and 
Roman-minded men," as Emerson called them, who 

8s 



RELATIVE VALUES IN KNOWLEDGE 

will find no surer road to culture and effectiveness 
than the one trodden in Oxford and Cambridge half a 
century ago. The studies that ' ' open, invigorate and 
enrich the mind," to borrow a phrase of Macaulay, 
can never be obsolete with those whom they thus 
affect. The thoroughness and continuity of these 
courses at their best gives something of the exactness 
of knowledge and loyalty to truth which characterize 
the man of science. To force a musician or a poet or 
a classicist to traverse the whole range of the sciences 
might be as unwise or as futile as to keep a Faraday 
writing Latin verses. Moreover, on the exactness of 
this training in the old Tripos many great investigators 
have based the thoroughness of their methods. It is, 
again, not needful for all men to learn all science. If 
it be needful, it is impossible. From one science the 
methods of all science may be learned. Respect for 
knowledge is one of the noblest lessons which real 
knowledge teaches. 

In other words, Mr. Spencer does not seem clearly 
to realize that each course of study must be individual. 
Each man should follow, as near as may be, that line 
of effort which will do the most for him, which will 
enable him to realize the best possibilities of his own 
life. There is no single curriculum, no ideal curricu- 
lum, and any prearranged course of advanced study 
is an affront to the mind of the real student. We 
may admit that the great need of civilized man in 
each of Mr. Spencer's five categories is science. But 

86 



RELATIVE VALUES IN KNOWLEDGE 

the need is rather that science should exist in the com- 
munity, that men should realize the value of exact 
knowledge and respect its teachings. Among men 
must exist a division of labor. No one man can 
master even a single branch of science. Mastery- 
means willingness to forego knowledge in other fields. 
A fixed curriculum even in science, covering a wide 
range, would necessitate superficiality in all. The real 
need, as indicated by Mr. Spencer, is therefore met 
by full provision for the teaching of each of the 
sciences he names and many others, while among 
these the student is free to choose for himself. We 
ask not that science be placed in the curriculum, for 
we can tolerate no curriculum. The course of study 
itself is a relic of mediaevalism. We ask that science 
be made accessible to all and in all stages of educa- 
tion. The rest will take care of itself. 

A minor criticism is this. Mr. Spencer seems to 
lay all stress on the subject and to say little of the 
teacher. He could have shown the unfitness of the 
teaching force as readily as the unfitness of the sub- 
jects taught. In fact, the two deficiencies go together. 
A true teacher, thorough, alert, devoted, is not a re- 
actionist. He will not place the millineries of culture 
above the realities, and dead conventionalities above 
the contact with the living laws of God. Wherever a 
great teacher has arisen under any system in any sub- 
ject, something of the facts and methods of science 
has come in with him. In the very day in which 

87 



RELATIVE VALUES IN KNOWLEDGE 

Spencer wrote, Agassiz taught science in Harvard, 
both subject and method being- dealt with in the most 
modern fashion, one on which the twentieth century, 
or the twenty-fifth, can offer no improvement. 

Let me recall the discussion, also some forty years 
old, between Emerson and Agassiz. 

Emerson, himself one of the sanest and broadest 
of men, saw in the work of Agassiz elements of 
danger, whereby the time-honored symmetry of Har- 
vard might be destroyed. In a lecture on universi- 
ties, in Boston, Emerson made some such statement 
as this: That natural history was " getting too great 
an ascendency at Harvard ' ' ; that it ' ' was out of pro- 
portion to the other departments." And he hinted 
that ' ' a check-rein would not be amiss on the enthu- 
siastic young professor who is responsible for this. ' ' 

' ' Do you not see, ' ' Agassiz wrote to Emerson, 
' ' that the way to bring about a well-proportioned 
development of all the resources of the university is 
not to check the natural history department, but to 
stimulate all the others? Not that the zoological 
school grows too fast, but that the others do not grow 
fast enough? This sounds invidious and perhaps 
boastful somewhat; but it is you," he said, "and not 
I, who have instituted the comparison. It strikes me 
that you have not hit upon the best remedy for this 
want of balance. If symmetry is to be obtained by 
cutting down the most vigorous growth, it seems to 
me it would be better to have a little irregularity here 



RELATIVE VALUES IN KNOWLEDGE 

and there. In stimulating, by every means in my 
power, the growth of the museum and the means of 
education connected with it, I am far from having a 
selfish wish to see my own department tower above 
the others. I wish that every one of my colleagues 
would make it hard for me to keep up with him; and 
there are some, I am happy to say, who are ready to 
run a race with me. ' ' 

In these words of Agassiz may be seen the keynote 
of modern university progress. The university should 
be the great refuge-hut on the ultimate boundaries of 
knowledge, from which, daily and weekly, adventur- 
ous bands set out on voyages of discovery. It should 
be the Upernavik from which Polar travelers draw 
their supplies, and as the shoreless sea of the unknown 
meets us on every side, the same house of refuge and 
supply will serve for a thousand different exploring 
parties, moving out in every direction into the infinite 
ocean. This is the university ideal of the future. 
Some day it will be felt as a loss and a crime if any 
one who could be an explorer is forced to become 
anything else. And even then, after countless ages 
of education and scientific progress, the true univer- 
sity will still stand on the boundaries, its walls still 
washed by the same unending sea, the boundless 
ocean of possible human knowledge. 

Emerson once wrote to his daughter: "It matters 
little what your studies are: it all lies in who your 
teacher is." For he saw clearly one of the most 

89 



RELATIVE VALUES IN KNOWLEDGE 

important facts in education, that a great teacher never 
fails to leave a great mark on every student whose life 
he touches. 

The essential character of the university is Lehr- 
freiheit, the freedom of the teacher to give out the best 
that is in him, and Lernfreiheit, the freedom of the 
student to demand the best that the teacher can give. 
The one develops the other. The freedom of the 
student to ask what he needs stimulates the teacher to 
give what he demands. The teacher who can give his 
best and find it appreciated forthwith rises to higher 
levels of power and the standard of his associates 
must rise to keep pace with him. 

Do the criticisms of Herbert Spencer of forty 
years ago apply to the American university of today? 
Are the fundamentals of self-preservation, profes- 
sional soundness, family integrity, good citizenship, 
sacrificed to a conventional culture, part aesthetic, part 
aristocratic, part traditional, and in all ways remote 
from the needs of life? To say that this is not true in 
the American university of today, is to say that its 
work is democratic, practical, scientific and free. 
That it is all this, I believe we can readily show, and 
the facts readily appear m the records of those institu- 
tions which have been free to develop with the growth 
of the Republic. We may take Harvard University 
as an example, the oldest and best established, and on 
the whole the most typical. Its ideals are certainly 
very different from those of Oxford forty years ago, 

90 



RELATIVE VALUES IN KNOWLEDGE 

equally different from those of the old Harvard. In 
the first place, the institution is essentially democratic, 
not aristocratic. Its work is planned to meet the 
needs of the actual people, not to separate a choice 
few as a class apart. Its function is to fill democracy 
with men fitted to make the rule of the people the 
best government that exists. And this fact the people 
fully appreciate. It is the sons of men, not the sons 
of aristocrats, who throng the halls of Harvard. The 
large numbers testify to the largeness of the need 
which Harvard meets. And the diploma of Harvard 
no longer sets a man apart as a member of a special 
or privileged class. It testifies simply that he is "a 
youth of promise," fitted to take his place in the 
work of the world. 

With the democracy among students comes the 
democracy of studies. The old-time Tripos held sway 
because its chosen studies were sacred while all others 
were plebeian. In the new education all powers of 
the human mind are sacred alike. It is the business 
of the university to train them, to stimulate them all, 
not to repress the many for the sake of the few. The 
student of the human body, the investigator of matter 
and force, the lover of Greek art, all meet on equal 
ground on the university's hospitable campus. No 
longer are the prizes of scholarship offered for play 
while the serious worker among things as they are 
encounters a barred door. The rewards of knowing 
and doing are offered to all alike, and these are the 

9» 



RELATIVE VALUES IN KNOWLEDGE 

only legitimate prizes within the scope of the univer- 
sity. To place all men and all studies on one footing, 
is to make a real Republic of the university. This 
once done, the question of "What knowledge is of 
most worth ? " is one for each man to answer for him- 
self. What knowledge is worth most to me? And 
the very attempt to answer this question is in itself 
one of the most important factors in higher education. 
That each should answer it for himself is the essential 
element in the freedom of the university, and each 
year as it passes sees the American university more 
democratic and more free. 

That the work should be practical means that it 
should be conducted by competent teachers. Darwin 
tells us that the lectures in geology in Edinburgh in 
his day were so ' ' incredibly dull ' ' that he resolved 
that he would have ' ' nothing more to do with the 
subject, nor ever to read a book upon it." Such 
teaching was not practical, for the subject-matter of 
geology is of interest to whoever comes into intelli- 
gent contact with it. The most practical teaching is 
that in which the subject is borne most strongly to the 
student's mind. The professorship in Harvard, let us 
say, is not given as a reward for social or ecclesias- 
tical distinction, or for a competitive tour de force 
in memory. It is given to those scholars who know 
how to teach, who know how to reach the heart of their 
subjects for themselves and to bring their students to 
the same vitalizing contact. And in the choice of 

92 



RELATIVE VALUES IN KNOWLEDGE 

teachers the demands of democracy are always con- 
sidered. In each department is wanted the best that 
there is, and no department of rational human interest 
is overlooked or slighted. 

Is the American university scientific.'' If we 
answer Yes, we do not mean that science only is 
studied, nor even that every individual student is 
giving attention to science. "America means oppor- 
tunity," and the American university is an intensi- 
fication of this same definition of Emerson's. The 
university does its part, not in forcing the student 
over a curriculum of all sciences or of any sciences. 
It has only to make generous provision for the teach- 
ing of each and all of them, and to leave the rest to 
the student. The cost of teaching science is far 
greater than that of teaching language and mathe- 
matics. The vast endowments of our great universi- 
ties of today find their justification in this fact. These 
schools are trying honestly to bring before the student 
the possibilities of human knowledge. The individual 
sciences are not favored at the expense of the tradi- 
tional subjects. More money is spent on the teaching 
of Greek today than ever before, but Greek no longer 
occupies an exclusive position. It is not an object of 
worship while physiology is an object of contempt. 
Once thrown to the democratic level, we find the clas- 
sics of Greece really exalted. Homer and Euripides 
are studied now for their own sakes, not for the badge 
or hood or gown or social distinction that they may 

93 



RELATIVE VALUES IN KNOWLEDGE 

in a roundabout way confer. So they are studied by 
scholars with the methods and purposes of scholars, 
not by recalcitrant schoolboys, driven over an unwill- 
ing race-course in response to the demands of tradi- 
tion. To say that the university is scientific is to say 
that it is genuine, that it is devoted to realities, not to 
make-believes and shams. It is said that * ' respect the 
outside ' ' was a favored motto of the old education in 
England. But science does not respect the outside. 
It aims to go to the very heart of things, and in propor- 
tion to the extension of its spirit do we witness the dis- 
appearance of caste and conventions. The things men 
agree to pretend to be true vanish at the touch of truth. 
It is true that we have in America not a few insti- 
tutions in which the traditional ideals are still cher- 
ished and to which the criticisms of Mr. Spencer still 
apply in full force. But these are few and not typical, 
and their influence is not growing. The students go 
where they can get what they want, and the Zeitgeist 
responds to their demand. The American university 
of today is molded by the best scientific thought of 
the century. One of the voices to which it has re- 
sponded is that of Herbert Spencer. And the essence 
of his criticism has found positive expression in the 
■constructive work of the great university-builders of 
our Republic. Let the young man or young woman 
of today ask, "What knowledge is of most worth to 
me?" In the course of study of our American 
universities will be found the unhampered answer, the 

94 



RELATIVE VALUES IN KNOWLEDGE 

answer of Herbert Spencer, if you like, the answer 
of Agassiz, or Emerson or Eliot or White, the ma- 
terials for your own answer, whatever it be. And 
whatever you may require, you will not be turned 
away empty-handed. 

The progress of the next half-century will be, not 
in development of new lines in education, but in inten- 
sification of the work we are now doing. It will be 
in developing better teachers and in closer contact 
between teacher and pupil. We must realize that the 
needs of the student form the sole reason for the uni- 
versity' s existence. It is built that it may help men. 
Forty years ago in English universities the good 
teacher was the very rare exception and was prac- 
tically found only among the private tutors dependent 
for a living on the young men they taught. The 
university professors held their positions as sinecures, 
rewards for birth or breeding or efforts in the past, 
but requiring no expenditure of force in the present. 
This condition is not wholly vanished from the English 
universities and its shadow still darkens even the uni- 
versities of America. 

There was a time when the ambition to be a good 
teacher was regarded in our colleges as an ignoble 
one. The college professor was a being of a higher 
order, temporarily in hard luck, because he was 
forced for a living to sit out his days before classes of 
unwilling boys. To be above one's work was held as 
the maintenance of proper academic dignity. 

95 



RELATIVE VALUES IN KNOWLEDGE 

This condition is rapidly passing. The college 
professor, like other men, is judged by what he does. 
Yet even now, not half the men who hold the profes- 
sor's chair can be called good teachers. The real 
work of every institution rests on a very few men. 
The others mark time and assign tasks, their per- 
sonality counting for very little. The progress of 
education demands that each man who holds a college 
chair should directly contribute to higher education. 
It is not his knowledge alone which concerns the stu- 
dent. His effectiveness depends upon his personality. 
The university of the future will demand the character 
of the great teacher, the man who believes in truth, 
who believes in men, and who knows how to lead men 
to the highest truth he knows. 

The best teacher, other things being equal, is the 
one who comes nearest to the student. To bring the 
teacher close to the student is to multiply his influ- 
ence many-fold. The very usefulness of our univer- 
sities tends to weaken the bond of personal influence. 
The man is lost in the mass, and because the mass is 
so great, cheap or temporary help is brought in, and 
the professor is pushed away still farther. It is the 
problem of the modern university to remedy this con- 
dition. In the old-time college every one knew every 
one else, and if perchance in the small number one 
great teacher found place, the lives of all the others 
were richer in consequence. But in the university of 
today, with its array of great teachers, of noble 



RELATIVE VALUES IN KNOWLEDGE 

investigators, of men whose names are known wher- 
ever civilization extends, the mere student may see none 
of them. Temporary assistants at a thousand a year, 
less experienced and less capable than those he left in 
the academy, may be the only teachers he can reach. 
When this is the condition, higher education has lost 
a large part of its effectiveness. 

The keynote to the education of the future must 
be "Constructive Individualism." The foundation of 
its method must be "knowing men by name." This 
is no new discovery. It was not invented in Palo 
Alto, nor yet in Harvard, nor in Michigan. It is as 
old as Socrates or Plato. It has been recognized 
wherever the training of men has been taken seriously. 

A Japanese writer, Uchimura, says this of educa- 
tion in old Japan: "We were not taught in classes 
then. The grouping of soul-bearing human beings 
into classes, as sheep upon Australian farms, was not 
known in our old schools. Our teachers believed, I 
think instinctively, that man {^persona ) is unclassifi- 
able; that he must be dealt with personally — i. e., 
face to face, and soul to soul. So they schooled us 
one by one — each according to his idiosyncrasies, 
physical, mental and spiritual. They knew each 07ie 
of us by name. And as asses were never harnessed 
with horses, there was but little danger of the latter 
being beaten down into stupidity, or the former driven 
into the valedictorians' graves. In this respect, there- 
fore, our old-time teachers in Japan agreed with 

97 



RELATIVE VALUES IN KNOWLEDGE 

Socrates and Plato in their theory of education. So 
naturally the relation between students and teachers 
was the closest one possible. We never called our 
teachers by that unapproachable name, Professor. 
We called them Sensei, 'men born before' — so 
named because of their prior birth, not only in respect 
of the time of their appearance in this world, which 
was not always the case, but also of their coming into 
the understanding of the truth. It was this, our idea 
of relationship between teacher and student, which 
made some of us to comprehend at once the intimate 
relation between the Master and the disciples which 
we found in the Christian Bible. When we found 
written therein that the disciple is not above his 
master, nor the servant above his lord; or that the 
good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep, and other 
similar sayings, we took them almost instinctively as 
things known to us long before. ' ' 

Thus it was in old Japan. Thus should it be in 
new America. In such manner do the oldest ideas 
forever renew their youth, when these ideas are 
based, not on tradition or convention, but in the 
nature of man. 

We may thus answer Mr. Spencer's question, 
"What knowledge is of most worth?" in this way: 
' ' That which is worth most to me. ' ' And the mis- 
sion of the university is to furnish this knowledge, 
just this knowledge which I want, and to furnish it 
to me. 

98 



V. 



RECENT TENDENCIES IN COLLEGE 
EDUCATION. 

IT HAS long been recognized that a four years' 
college course, after the course in the secondary- 
school, and preceding the course in professional 
training, holds the young man a very long time 
in school. Few men are prepared for college, as 
matters stand, before the age of seventeen or eighteen. 
Few graduate under twenty-one or twenty-two, and 
the professional school demands the years to twenty- 
four, twenty-five or twenty-six. After this follows 
another year or two of petty beginnings, and by 
the time the young man is fairly under way, he 
has reached the age of thirty. If from ill health, 
hesitation of policy, or for any other reason, the 
college course is delayed, the entrance on profes- 
sional Ufe becomes correspondingly later. By this 
process, the ancient rule of health, "Rise early, be- 
fore you are twenty-five, if possible," is persistently 
violated. 

There is no advantage in merely putting in time 
in college at the expense of serious work outside. 
Every day in school should justify itself. Wherever 



TENDENCIES IN COLLEGE EDUCATION 

time can be saved without sacrifice of results, it is a 
real gain in education. 

The college course has been systematically length- 
ened within the past twenty years. It has been made 
longer that it may be enriched and made effective. 
To this end, subject after subject of an elementary 
character has been thrown backward to the prepara- 
tory schools. In this, there are some advantages. 
The college with more advanced pupils becomes more 
serious and more enlightened. It offers a broader 
range of subjects, and touches the interests of a much 
larger number of men. 

On the other hand, students are often kept in 
their local high schools until they are tired of the 
place and tired of the work. Higher education begins 
when a boy leaves home and learns to depend on 
himself. Because the high schools have an inade- 
quate and over-feminine teaching force, very many 
boys who might have been helped by a college edu- 
cation abandon school long before they are ready to 
enter college. There is a constant pressure on the 
preparatory school to undertake more work and to 
do it more rapidly. The preparatory school tries to 
do this, with some success and also with serious draw- 
backs, because the results are tested by the quantity 
rather than the quality of work done. 

The college has not yet devised a qualitative scale 
of admission. Not how much the student knows, but 
what is the nature of his ability and training, should 



TENDENCIES IN COLLEGE EDUCATION 

be the test of preparation. The college ought to 
insist that the student shall be able to go on with the 
higher work successfully, rather than that he should 
have to his credit such and such subjects, or their 
equivalents. But it is easier to make numerical esti- 
mates than to test the student's mettle. It is easier to 
measure cordwood than culture, and our tests of prep- 
aration are based on the method used in estimating 
cordwood. 

The college should receive men whenever they are 
ready for its freedom and ready to do its work. If it 
can devise a sure method, it may ' ' dip down ' ' into 
the lower schools and take their best students when 
they have reached fitness for independent study. 

Having turned the freshman year of former days 
over to the preparatory schools, the college can 
now do correspondingly more in its senior year. 
Shall it use this time for general culture, or for pro- 
fessional training? Here the pressure to yield this 
year to the professional schools makes itself felt. In 
America, the professional schools have vainly tried to 
train men who have no foundation of knowledge or 
discipline; to make lawyers and physicians out of men 
with neither scientific knowledge nor literary culture. 
This has failed, and in its failure has brought all 
American professions, except engineering, into disre- 
pute. 

The reputable professional school demands, or will 
soon demand, a college education as a prerequisite for 



TENDENCIES IN COLLEGE EDUCATION 



entrance. No man with less training than this can 
do specialized work in university fashion. The col- 
lege course represents a degree of enlightenment and 
a kind of training without which professional success 
and usefulness are not possible. The extension of 
the elective system has enabled the college to meet 
the needs of all kinds of men of brains and force. 
To shorten the college course to three years is to 
yield the last year to the professional schools, and 
these sorely need the time. 

Another influence tending in this direction comes 
from the German educational system. In Germany, 
the local high school, or gymnasium, takes, let us 
say, two of the years we give to the college. The 
professional school or university takes the rest. The 
university gives no general culture or general training. 
The gymnasium gives nothing else, and its curriculum 
is as rigid as that of the university is free. 

While German educators are considering the pos- 
sible introduction of the college as an intermediate 
between the college and the university, there is in 
America a tendency toward the obliteration of the 
college, by merging its higher years into the univer- 
sity, its lower into the preparatory school. 

It is true that in the gymnasium students get on 
faster than in our high schools and preparatory 
schools. The German student is as far along in his 
studies at sixteen as the American at eighteen. This 
is due to the fact that American life makes more out- 



TENDENCIES IN COLLEGE EDUCATION 

side demands on boys than life in Germany does. 
The American boy is farther along in self-reliance and 
in knowledge of the world at sixteen than the German 
at twenty. The American college freshman, espe- 
cially if brought up in the West, knows a thousand 
things, outside of his books and more useful, because 
more true than most of what his books contain. He 
can ride, drive, swim, row, hunt, take care of horses, 
play games, run an engine, or attend to some form of 
business, while the German boy cannot even black his 
own shoes. As education is no perquisite of the rich, 
the American boy has very likely been obliged to 
earn the money he spends on his own education. To 
do this he loses time in scholastic marks, but in the 
long run this is clear gain, provided that he does not 
abandon his education. The boy who graduates at 
twenty-four is often more than three years ahead of 
the one w^ho takes his bachelor's degree at twenty- 
one. To lose time in testing life is not a loss at all, 
and the American boy is the stronger for his early 
escape from leading strings. When his university 
training is over, he is not merely learned; he is ade- 
quate, and the higher ideal of personal effectiveness 
supplements the German ideal of erudition, or the 
English ideal of personal culture. 

It is proposed now to let a man graduate in three 
years, provided he can do four years' average work 
in that time. This is no new proposition and needs 
no discussion. Many men can do in three years more 

103 



TENDENCIES IN COLLEGE EDUCATION 

than the average man can in four. In many institu- 
tions, in most of those in the West, this privilege has 
been allowed for many years. If guarded from abuse, 
and if the possibility of mere cramming is excluded, 
there can be no objection to it. In many institutions 
a man graduates whenever he has done the required 
work, and the propriety of this needs no argument. 

But the average man cannot do the required work 
in less than four years. What shall we do for him? 
It is practicable to reduce the amount of work re- 
quired for graduation. This would still leave the 
college course longer than it was twenty years ago, 
because so much more is now required for admission 
to college. 

I do not believe that this is the best solution. It 
is better, I believe, to bring the elements of profes- 
sional knowledge and the beginning of advanced 
research into the course itself. It is better to break 
down the barrier between the college and the univer- 
sity, by letting the university dip down into the col- 
lege. For example, in making lawyers, the work in 
the foundations of law can be relegated to the college, 
as in making chemists we now teach elementary chem- 
istry in the freshman year. In training physicians, 
the elementary work, physiology, general anatomy, 
histology, and chemistry, should all be in the college 
course, and in making scientific men of any grade, 
the senior year is none too early for the beginnings 
of scientific research. I believe that the four years' 

104 



TENDENCIES IN COLLEGE EDUCATION 

college course offers a great advantage. It is now 
possible to offer the serious student, before graduat- 
ing, the crowning value of the college course, — 
something of the method of research. It is likewise 
possible to offer the elements of professional training 
inside the college course, and not as an affair wholly 
separate. In favor of this arrangement, the following 
facts may be urged: 

It is an advantage to college training to relate it 
to life. The sooner a man knows what he is to do in 
life, and gets at it, the better. This being admitted, 
the fuller the preparation the better, provided the 
final goal is always kept in view. To make a first- 
rate surgeon, the scalpel should be in use from youth 
onward. It need not be used on the human body, 
but the methods of histology and anatomy should be 
learned early and never allowed to fall into disuse. 
To put an embryo physician through four years of 
classics and mathematics, and then to turn him sud- 
denly into dissection and clinic, is to invite failure. 
He has learned nothing of research in his college 
course, his hand has grown clumsy and his power of 
observation is dulled. To be a good physician, he 
should have turned his whole college course in that 
direction, — not that he should have had less of litera- 
ture and the humanities, but that these should aid 
science, not displace it. 

A young man makes a better lawyer if he is in 
some degree a law student throughout his college 

105 



TENDENCIES IN COLLEGE EDUCATION 

course, for six or seven years, not merely for three 
at the end. Elementary equity is in no sense an 
advanced study. It has a natural place in the college 
curriculum, with just as much right as economics, or 
the history of philosophy, and to the ordinary col- 
lege course the universities should relegate elemen- 
tary law, physiology, histology, comparative anatomy, 
and all forms of science which are elementary and 
fundamental to professional research. When this is 
done, four years will be none too long for general 
training, and the professional departments will deal 
with men prepared to do serious work, men worthy 
of the advantages the best libraries and laboratories 
can have to offer. Then, if the time is to be short- 
ened, the result can be reached by the higher demands 
of the professional schools. It is absurd to call the 
department of law "a graduate school" when half 
its students are engaged with the a-b-c of equity, a 
subject as elementary as trigonometry or qualitative 
analysis. Let elementary law go with elementary 
chemistry and the advanced school can devote itself 
to advanced training, and a man who is to be a lawyer 
can think in terms of law throughout his college 
course. He will be a better lawyer for doing so, and 
his work being better related to life, he will be in 
every other respect a better scholar on account of it. 

Leaving out ill-equipped or temporary schools, the 
American professional school of the future will have 
one or the other of two great purposes. The one is 

io6 



TENDENCIES IN COLLEGE EDUCATION 

typified, perhaps, by the Professional Schools of 
Michigan. The professional school will take the pro- 
fession as it is and raise it as a whole. So many men 
will be doctors, so many will be lawyers in Michigan. 
Let us take them as we find them and make them just 
as good lawyers and doctors as we can. Let us not 
drive them away by requirements they cannot or will 
not meet, but adjust the work and conditions to the 
best they can meet, the best standards winning in the 
long run and carrying public opinion with them. 

The other ideal is perhaps typified by Johns Hop- 
kins University. Let the university medical school 
deal with the exceptional man of exceptional ability 
and exceptional training. Give him special advan- 
tages, send out a limited number of the best physi- 
cians possible, and raise the standard of the profession 
by filling its ranks with the best the university can 
send. 

The one ideal or the other will be, consciously or 
not, before each professional school which strives to 
be really helpful. It is not for me to say which is the 
better. The one purpose naturally presents itself to 
state institutions, or to institutions dependent on ap- 
propriations or patronage. The other is more readily 
achieved by institutions of independent endowment. 
It is a matter of economy that all schools should not 
be alike in this regard. 

The high school course gives a certain breadth of 
culture. The high school of today is as good as the 



TENDENCIES IN COLLEGE EDUCATION 

college of forty years ago, so far as studies go. It 
misses the fact of going away from home and of close 
relation with men of higher wisdom and riper experi- 
ence than our high schools demand in their teachers. 
It takes a broader mental horizon to be a physician 
than merely to practice medicine, to be a lawyer than 
merely to practice law. Those who want the least 
education possible can get along with very little; they 
can omit the college. But for large-minded, widely 
competent men, men fit for great duties, not a moment 
of the college course can be spared. Whether to 
take a college education or not, depends on the man — 
what there is in him — and on the course of study. 
There is no magic in the name of college, and there 
is no gain in wrong subjects, work shirked, or in right 
subjects taken under wrong teachers. Studies, like 
•other food, must be assimilated before they can help 
the system. 

The great indictment of the college is its waste of 
the student's time; prescribed studies taken unwil- 
lingly; irrelevant studies taken to fill up; helpful stud- 
ies taken under poor teachers; any kind of studies 
taken idly, — all these have tended to discredit the 
college course. Four years is all too short for a lib- 
eral education, if every moment be utilized. Two 
years is all too long, if they are spent in idleness and 
dissipation, or if tainted by the spirit of indifference. 

The spirit of the college is more important than 
the time it takes. The college atmosphere should be 

io8 



TENDENCIES IN COLLEGE EDUCATION 

a clean and wholesome one, full of impulses to action. 
It is good to breathe this air, and in doing so, it mat- 
ters little whether one's studies be wholly professional, 
half professional, or directed towards ends of culture 
alone. 

In city colleges where the students live at home, 
traveling back and forth on street cars, a college 
atmosphere cannot be developed. In these institu- 
tions, as a rule, the college work is perfunctory, its 
recitations being often regarded as a disagreeable 
interpretation of social and athletic affairs. As a 
rule, higher education begins when a man leaves 
home to become part of a guild of scholars. The 
city college is merely a continued high school, and 
with both students and teachers there is a willing- 
ness to cut it as short as possible, so that the young 
men can "get down to business." In institutions 
of this type, the professional school forms a sharp 
contrast to the college in its stronger requirements 
and more serious purpose. In other types of col- 
lege, it is the general student who does the best work. 
In many of them the professional departments are 
far inferior in tone and spirit to the general academic 
course. 

It becomes, then, a question as to the college 
itself, how long a student should stay in. If the 
academic requirements are severe, just and honest; if 
the idler, the butterfly, the blockhead and the para- 
site are promptly dropped from the rolls; if the spirit 

109 



TENDENCIES IN COLLEGE EDUCATION 

of plain living and high thinking rules in the college, 
the student should stay there as long as he can, and, 
if possible, take part of his professional work under its 
guidance. The nearer the teacher, the better the 
work. The value of teachers grows less as the square 
of their distance increases. If the college course is a 
secondary matter, with inferior teachers talking down 
to their students, studies prescribed because the faculty 
cares too little for the individual man to adapt its 
courses to his needs, — an atmosphere of trifling, 
or no atmosphere at all, — the sooner the student 
gets into something real, the better. A good 
university may develop in a great city, a good college 
cannot, because students and teachers are all too 
far apart. 

In this matter the college degree is only an inci- 
dent. It is the badge of admission to the roll of 
alumni, a certificate of good fellowship, which always 
means a little and may imply a great deal. But the 
degree is only one of the toys of our educational 
babyhood, as hoods and gowns represent educational 
bib and tucker. Don't go out of your way to take 
a degree. Don't miss it because you are in too great 
a hurry. For the highest professional success, you 
can afford to take your time. It takes a larger pro- 
vision for a cruise to the Cape of Good Hope than for 
a run to the Isle of Dogs. 

The primitive American college was built strictly 
on English models. Its purpose was to breed clergy- 



TENDENCIES IN COLLEGE EDUCATION 

men and gentlemen, and to fix on these its badge of 
personal culture, raising them above the common 
mass of men. Till within the last thirty years the 
traditions of the English Tripos held undisputed sway. 
We need not go into details of the long years in 
which Latin, Greek and mathematics, with a dash of 
outworn philosophy, constituted higher education in 
America. The value of the classical course lay largely 
in its continuity. Whoever learned Greek, the per- 
fect language and the noble literature, gained some- 
thing with which he would never willingly part. Even 
the weariness of Latin grammar and the intricacies of 
half-understood calculus have their value in the com- 
radery of common suffering and common hope. The 
weakness of the classical course lay in its lack of rela- 
tion to life. It had more charms for pedants than for 
men, and the men of science and the men of action 
turned away hungry from it. 

The growth of the American university came on 
by degrees, different steps, some broadening, some 
weakening, by which the tyranny of the Tripos was 
broken, and the democracy of studies established with 
the democracy of men. 

It was something over thirty years ago when Her- 
bert Spencer asked this great question: "What 
knowledge is of most worth?" To the schoolmen 
of England this came as a great shock, as it had 
never occurred to most of them that any knowledge 
had any value at all. Its function was to produce 



TENDENCIES IN COLLEGE EDUCATION 

culture, which, in turn, gave social position. That 
there were positive values and relative values was new 
in their philosophy. Spencer went on to show that 
those subjects had most value which most strength- 
ened and enriched life, first, those needful to the per- 
son, then those of value in professional training, then 
in the rearing of the family, the duty as a citizen, and 
finally those fitting for esthetic enjoyment. For all 
these, except the last, the English universities made 
no preparation, and for all these purposes Spencer 
found the highest values in science, the accumulated, 
tested, arranged results of human experience. Spen- 
cer's essay assumed that there was some one best 
course of study — the best for every man. This is 
one of the greatest fallacies in education. Moreover, 
he took little account of the teacher, perhaps assum- 
ing with some other English writers that all teachers, 
were equally inefiicient, and that the difference between, 
one and another may be regarded as negligible. 

It has been left for American experimenters in 
education to insist on the democracy of the intellect. 
The best subjects for any man to study are those best 
fitted for his own individual development, those which, 
will help make the actual most of him and his life. 
Democracy of intellect does not mean equality of 
brains, still less indifference in regard to their quality. 
It means simply fair play in the schedule of studies. 
It means the development of fit courses of study, not 
traditional ones, of a "tailor-made" curriculum for 



TENDENCIES IN COLLEGE EDUCATION 

each man instead of the "hand-me-down" article, 
misfitting all alike. 

In the time of James II, Richard Rumbold "never 
could believe that God had created a few men already- 
booted and spurred, with millions already saddled 
and bridled for these few to ride." In like fashion, 
Andrew Dickson White could never believe that God 
had created a taste for the niceties of grammar or 
even the appreciation of noble literature, these few 
tastes to be met and trained while the vast body of 
other talents were to be left unaided and untouched, 
because of their traditional inferiority. In unison 
with President White, Ezra Cornell declared that he 
' ' would found an institution where any person could 
find instruction in any study." In like spirit the 
Morrill Act was framed, bringing together all rays of 
various genius, the engineer, and the psychologist, 
the student of literature and the student of exact 
science, "Greek-minded" men and tillers of the soil, 
each to do his own work in the spirit of equality 
before the law. Under the same roof each one gains 
by mutual association. The literary student gains in 
seriousness and power, the engineer in refinement and 
appreciation. Like in character is the argument for 
co-education, a condition encouraged by this same 
Morrill Act. The men become more refined from 
association with noble women, the women more 
earnest from association with serious men. The men 
are more manly, the women more womanly in co- 

113 



TENDENCIES IN COLLEGE EDUCATION 

education, a condition opposed alike to rowdyism and 
frivolity. 

In the same line we must count the influence of 
Mark Tappan, perhaps the first to conceive of a state 
university, existing solely for the good of the state, to 
do the work the state most needs, regardless of what 
other institutions may do in other states. Agassiz in 
these same times insisted that advanced work is better 
than elementary, for its better disciplinary quality. 
He insisted that Harvard in his day was only "a 
respectable high school, where they taught the dregs 
of education." Thorough training in some one line 
he declared was the backbone of education. It was 
the base line by which the real student was enabled to 
measure scholarship in others. 

In most of our colleges the attempt to widen the 
course of study by introducing desirable things pre- 
ceded the discovery that general courses of study 
prearranged had no real value. We should learn that 
all prescribed work is bad work unless it is prescribed 
by the nature of the subject. The student in electrical 
engineering takes to mathematics, because he knows 
that his future success with electricity depends on his 
mastery of mechanics and the calculus. In the same 
fashion, the student in medicine is willing to accept 
chemistry and physiology as prescribed studies. But 
a year in chemistry, or two years in higher mathe- 
matics, put in for the broadening of the mind or 
because the faculty decrees it, has no broadening 

114 



TENDENCIES IN COLLEGE EDUCATION 

effect. Work arbitrarily prescribed is always poorly 
done ; it sets low standards, and works demoralization 
instead of training. There cannot be a greater edu- 
cational farce than the required year of science in cer- 
tain literary courses. The student picks out the 
easiest science, the easiest teacher and the easiest way 
to avoid work, and the whole requirement is a source 
of moral evil. Nothing could be farther from the 
scientific method than a course in science taken with- 
out the element of personal choice. 

The traditional courses of study were first broken 
up by the addition of short courses in one thing or 
another, substitutes for Latin or Greek, patchwork 
courses without point or continuity. These substitute 
courses were naturally regarded as inferior, and for 
them very properly a new degree was devised, the 
degree of B. S. — Bachelor of Surfaces. 

That work which is required in the nature of 
things is taken seriously. Serious work sets the pace, 
exalts the teacher, inspires the man. The individual 
man is important enough to justify his teachers in 
taking the time and the effort to plan a special course 
for him. 

Through the movement towards the democracy of 
studies and constructive individualism, a new ideal is 
being reached in American universities, that of per- 
sonal effectiveness. The ideal in England has always 
been that of personal culture; that of France, the 
achieving, through competitive examinations, of ready- 



TENDENCIES IN COLLEGE EDUCATION 

made careers, the satisfaction of what Villari* calls 
"Impiegomania," the craze for appointment; that of 
Germany, thoroughness of knowledge ; that of Amer- 
ica, the power to deal with men and conditions. 
Everywhere we find abundant evidence of personal 
effectiveness of American scholars. Not abstract 
thought, not life-long investigation of minute data, 
not separation from men of lower fortune, but the 
power to bring about results is the characteristic of 
the American scholar of today. 

From this point of view the progress of the Ameri- 
can university is most satisfactory, and most encour- 
aging. The large tendencies are moving in the right 
direction. What shall we say of the smaller ones? 

Not long ago, the subject of discussion in a 
thoughtful address was this: the " Peril of the Small 
College." The small college has been the guardian 

*" A consequence of cheap higher ismand Anarchism in Northern Italy. 
education in Italy is the vast and ever- or into the Mafia and the Caviorra in 
increasing army of the educated un- the South. But a large number try to 
employed [called spostati]. Every obtain that panacea for all ills — Gov- 
year a large number of graduates in ernment employment. Impiegomania 
law, medicine, belles-lettres and is a recognized disease in Italy, and a 
science are turned out into the world young man who can obtain an appoint- 
to enter professions in which there is mentina Government office, where he 
no room for them. Their education has little work and a salary of ^50 or 
has unfitted them for useful work ^5oayear.thinkshimselfattheheight 
without enabling them to succeed in of earthly bliss. Government employ- 
the liberal professions. Men who in ment is the Holy Grail of three-quar- 
England would go into business or ters of the university graduates. The 
emigrate to America or the Colonies, most miserably paid impiegato or the 
in Italy become lawyers without most unsuccessful professional man 
clients, doctors without patients, regards himself as superior to the 
journalists and litterateurs without most prosperous tradesman or skilled 
readers, professors without pupils, mechanic." — Villari — '^Village Life 
Some succeed in getting a little work in Town and Country.^' 
by underselling abler men, thus low- It is not the cheapness of higher 
ering the already low professional education which is here at fault, but 
incomes ; others lead idle and vicious its misdirection and the wrong mo- 
lives for a time, and drift into Social- tives ruling in Italian society. 

116 



TENDENCIES IN COLLEGE EDUCATION 

of higher education in the past. It is most helpful in 
the present and we cannot afford to let it die. We 
understand that the large college becomes the univer- 
sity. Because it is rich, it attempts advanced work 
and work in many lines. It takes its opportunity, 
and an opportunity which the small college cannot 
grasp. Advanced work costs money. A wide range 
of subjects, taught with men, libraries and labora- 
tories, is a costly matter, but by a variety of supply 
the demand is formed. The large college has many 
students, because it offers many opportunities. Be- 
cause large opportunities bring influence and students 
and gifts, there is a tendency to exaggerate them. 
It is easy to feel that the facilities we offer are 
greater than is really the case. We are led to boast, 
because only boasting seems to catch the public eye. 
The peril of the small college is the peril of all 
colleges, the temptation of advertising. All boasting 
is self-cheapening. The peril of the small college is 
that in its effort to become large it shall cease to be 
sound. The small college can do good elementary 
work in several lines. It can do good advanced work 
in a very few. If it keeps its perspective, if it does 
only what it can do well, and does not pretend that 
bad work is good work, or that the work beyond its 
reach is not worth doing, it is in no danger. The 
small college may become either a junior college or 
high-grade preparatory school, sending its men else- 
where for the flower of their college education, or 

117 



TENDENCIES IN COLLEGE EDUCATION 

else it must become a small university running nar- 
rowly on a few lines, but attending to these with devo- 
tion and persistence. Either of these are honorable 
conditions. For the first of these the small college 
has a great advantage. It can come close to its 
students; it can "know its men by name." The 
value of a teacher is enhanced as he becomes more 
accessible. The work of the freshman and sopho- 
more years in many of our great colleges is sadly 
inadequate, because its means are not fitted to its 
ends. In very few of our large colleges does the 
elementary work receive the care its importance de- 
serves. 

The great college can draw the best teachers away 
from the small colleges. In this regard the great col- 
lege has an immense advantage. It has the best 
teachers, the best trained, the best fitted for the work 
of training. But in most cases the freshman never 
discovers this. There is no worse teaching done under 
the sun than in the lower classes of some of our most 
famous colleges. Cheap tutors, inexperienced and 
underpaid, are set to lecture to classes far beyond their 
power to interest. We are saving our money for 
original research, careless of the fact that we fail to 
give the elementary training which makes research 
possible. Too often, indeed, research itself, the 
noblest of all university functions, is made an adver- 
tismg fad. The demands of the university press have 
swollen the literature of science, but they have, proved 

ii8 



TENDENCIES IN COLLEGE EDUCATION 

a doubtful aid to its quality. Get something ready. 
Send it out. Show that we are doing something. 
All this never advanced science. It is through men 
born to research, trained to research, choicest product 
of nature and art, that science advances. 

Another effect of the advertising spirit is the cheap- 
ening of salaries. The smaller the salaries, the more 
departments we can support. It is the spirit of adver- 
tising that leads some institutions to tolerate a type 
of athlete who comes as a student with none of the 
student's purpose. I am a firm believer in college 
athletics. I have done my part in them in college and 
out. I know that "the color of life is red," but the 
value of athletic games is lost when outside gladiators 
are hired to play them. No matter what the induce- 
ment, the athletic contest has no value except as the 
spontaneous effort of the college man. To coddle the 
athlete is to render him a professional. If an institu- 
tion makes one rule for the ordinary student and 
another for the athlete it is party to a fraud. Without 
some such concession, half the great football teams of 
today could not exist. I would rather see football 
disappear and the athletic fields closed for ten years for 
fumigation than to see our colleges helpless in the 
hands of athletic professionalism, as many of them 
are today. 

This is a minor matter in one sense, but it is preg- 
nant with large dangers. Whatever the scholar does 
should be clean. What has the support of boards of 

119 



TENDENCIES IN COLLEGE EDUCATION 

scholars should be noble, helpful and inspiring. For 
the evils of college athletics, the apathy of college 
faculties is solely responsible. The blame falls on us : 
let us rise to our duty. 

There is something wrong in our educational prac- 
tice when a wealthy idler is allowed to take the name 
of student, on the sole condition that he and his 
grooms shall pass occasional examinations. There is 
no justification for the .granting of degrees on cheap 
terms, to be used in social decoration. It is said that 
the chief of the great coaching trust in one of our 
universities earns a salary larger than was ever paid 
to any honest teacher. His function is to take the 
man who has spent the term in idleness or dissipation, 
and by a few hours' ingenious coaching to enable him 
to write a paper as good as that of a real student. The 
examinations thus passed are mere shams, and by the 
tolerance of the system the teaching force becomes 
responsible for it. No educational reform of the day 
is more important than the revival of honesty in regard 
to credits and examinations, such a revival of honest 
methods as. shall make coaching trusts impossible. 

The same methods which cure the aristocratic ills 
of idleness and cynicism are equally effective in the 
democratic vice of rowdyism. With high standards 
of work, set not at long intervals by formal examina- 
tions, but by the daily vigilance and devotion of real 
teachers, all these classes of mock students disappear. 

The football tramp vanishes before the work-test. 



TENDENCIES IN COLLEGE EDUCATION 

The wealthy boy takes his proper place when honest, 
democratic brain effort is required of him. If he is 
not a student, he will no longer pretend to be one 
and ought not to be in college. The rowdy, the 
mucker, the hair-cutting, gate-lifting, cane-rushing 
imbecile is never a real student. He is a gamin mas- 
querading in cap and gown. The requirement of 
scholarship brings him to terms. If we insist that our 
colleges shall not pretend to educate those who cannot 
or will not be educated, v/e shall have no trouble with 
the moral training of the students. 

Above all, in the West, where education is free, 
we should insist that free tuition means serious work, 
that education means opportunity, that the student 
should do his part, and that the degree of the univer- 
sity should not be the seal of academic approbation of 
four years of idleness, rowdyism, profligacy or dissi- 
pation. 

Higher education, properly speaking, begins when 
a young man goes away from home to school. The 
best part of higher education is the development of 
the instincts of the gentleman and the horizon of the 
scholar. To this end self-directed industry is one of 
the most effective agents. As the force of example 
is potent in education, a college should tolerate idle- 
ness and vice neither among its students nor among it? 
teachers. 



VI. 

THE PERSONALITY OF THE 
UNIVERSITY. 

I AM asked, as a loyal citizen of California and as 
a representative of a sister republic of letters, 
which California cherishes across the bay, to add 
a word to the generous welcome which Califor- 
nia gives to the president of her university. My 
words, Mr. President, shall be words of advice, not 
that you need it, or should ever heed it, but because 
there is no other article of value with which I can so 
willingly part. 
4 It is a saying of Emerson that ' ' colleges can only 
serve us when their aim is not to drill but to create. 
They draw every ray of varied genius to their hospit- 
able halls, and by their concentrated influence set the 
heart of our youth into flame." The most precious 
thing in human life is personality. It is by this we 
know our friends and for this we love them. In most 
respects, as living organisms, men are alike. Each 
has eyes, hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, 
passions, is fed with the same food, hurt by the same 
weapons, warmed or cooled by the same winter or 
summer, and each in his degree is "pleased with a 



THE PERSONALITY OF THE UNIVERSITY 

rattle, tickled with a straw. ' ' For all this we do not 
care. What is all alike never interests us. It is the n 
slight and subtle elements of difference which help us 
to know one man from another, which enable us to 
love, to respect, to worship one man above his fellows. 
Among a thousand vegetative characters, we are 
touched by the one quality of personality, made up 
of a dozen minor attributes of kindness, wit, gladness, 
brilliancy, effectiveness, making a whole which we may 
love, fear or obey. 

In the same way, a university must have personality, 
else it cannot be great. A university is an aggre- 
gation of professorships, departments, buildings, books, 
seminaries and laboratories. But it is more than this. 
It is a place where students of all degrees come to- 
gether in the democracy of learning. It is an alliance 
of men devoted to the discovery and administration of 
the truth. But this is not all of the university ideal, 
for all universities, in their degree, are devoted to 
the same ends. In superficial regards all univer- 
sities are alike. All have buildings, libraries, mu- 
seums, microscopes, professorships. These are the 
university's vegetative organs. Without these it 
would not live, but by these only one university would 
not differ from another. It is not for these things all 
have in common that we know universities. Just as 
with men, it is the subtle element of personality. The 
Harvard spirit, the Cornell spirit, the Yale spirit, the 
spirit of Berkeley, the spirit of Stanford, all these are 

123 



THE PERSONALITY OF THE UNIVERSITY 

matters as real as the building' or the books, and more 
important. 

For the most valuable feature of a university is its 
character, the nature of its university atmosphere. 
This atmosphere is the conscious or unconscious work 
of the men who control. The atmosphere of greatness 
gathers around great teachers. Werner at Freiberg, 
Dollinger at Munich, Arnold at Rugby, Tappan at 
Ann Arbor, Hopkins at Williamstown, Agassiz at 
Cambridge, White at Ithaca — these serve only as 
illustrations. As with these, so with all great teachers 
everywhere. 

As the universities of America are constituted, it is 
the part of the president to create the university atmos- 
phere. He must set its pace, must frame its ideals and 
choose the men in whom these ideals can be realized. 
It is through the men he chooses that the university 
becomes a living person. The president is not himself 
the king. His noblest work is that of maker of kings. 
It is not what the president himself can do that first 
concerns the university. His personal power, skill or 
versatility are of little moment. It is what he can 
discern and divine in other men that gauges success. 
It is his instinct to know what the best work of others 
may be and how he can use it in the fabric he is build- 
ing. A long head and long patience he must needs 
have, for he has often to wait years for men to grow 
to what he expects of them, and others to find men to 
whom he can look for the right kind of growth. He 

124 



THE PERSONALITY OF THE UNIVERSITY 

must have the instinct to judge men and to estimate 
what men say of men. He must be keen to recog- 
nize in others qualities of worth he may not possess 
himself. He must have the wisdom to foster indi- 
vidual freedom and the firmness to check that free- 
dom that spends itself in futile, erratic or sentimental 
efforts. 

Out of all this and a hundred other elements, it 
is your place, Benjamin Ide Wheeler, as president of 
the great university of our great state, to construct 
your purpose and your policy, and to give the uni- 
versity its personality, its color and its atmosphere. 
Above all rests with you the forming of its moral tone, 
for after all character-building is the noblest work of 
the university, and I am one of those who believe that 
in this work the university may be made the most 
effective agency. I have known you for many 
years. Dr. Wheeler — thirteen years, is it not, in 
all? — always adequate to the work the gods set you to 
do. I know that you can meet, and will meet, all that 
the state expects of you. Because this is so, I regard 
this day, this 25th day of October, 1899, as one of 
the greatest, full of the fullest of hope, of all the days 
in the calendar of California. 

Just one word more. 

Some time ago a regent of the university said to 
me, "Now that we have Wheeler, we must change 
our notion of rivalry. Henceforth it shall not be 
Berkeley against Stanford, nor Stanford against 



THE PERSONALITY OF THE UNIVERSITY 

Berkeley, but California against the world," Now in 
all seriousness, why not? We recognize how natural 
advantages count in every field of labor, horse-raising, 
fruit-growing, ship-building. Why not in education ? 
In the environment fittest for training young men and 
women, there are three mighty elements — healthful- 
ness, beauty, freedom. These three are the distinctive 
characteristics of California. A perfect climate which 
calls one out of doors at all times of the year, and re- 
wards him for his coming, matchless beauty of moun- 
tain and forest, of lake and of the sea, of hill and river, 
and with endless elbow room, intellectually, physically 
and morally ! If we add to this the two universities, 
rival and cooperating, as well endowed as the best, and 
fairer in houses and outlook than the most beautiful of 
all the land, why should not California become a world- 
center of education? Men once flocked to Athens for 
such things. Why should they not come here ? Why 
not Berkeley and Stanford, together and indivisible, 
against the world? 

It has been Dr. Wheeler's good fortune and mine 
to sit at the feet of the same great master, Andrew D. 
White. We can remember President White's appeal 
to his alumni, that, wherever we might go, we should 
stand by * ' our state universities, for in them is the 
educational hope of the South and West." We of 
Stanford are not deaf to this appeal. We are citizens 
of California loyal and true. We shall stand by our 
state university, for in its development is the educa- 

126 



THE PERSONALITY OF THE UNIVERSITY 

tional hope of our Golden West, and we pledge to 
President Wheeler our help in fullest loyalty, when- 
ever and wherever and howsoever he may ask our 
aid. 



127 



VII. 

THE HIGHER EDUCATION OF THE 
BUSINESS MAN. 

IN THIS discussion the business man is held to 
be a man fitted to cake charge of or assist in 
large financial enterprises in manufacture, com- 
merce, transportation or banking. In this sense 
a salesman, stenographer or cash-boy is not a busi- 
ness man. 

By higher education we mean that intellectual 
training in varied subjects to be had in a specialized 
school, in general away from home, a school of such 
breadth and intensity as to have a definite college or 
university atmosphere. The ordinary business school 
or trade school, teaching devices without mental train- 
ing, would not meet this definition, and the classical 
college with its limited range of instruction would 
meet it only in part. 

The man with brains needs a corresponding degree 
of education. The greater the natural fitness the 
greater the need for thorough training and the more 
worthy the final result. 

^ The best education for a man of brains and char- 
acter involves three elements : 

ia8 



HIGHER EDUCATION OF BUSINESS MAN 

1. It should be directed toward a definite end. ' 
The sooner this end is seen the better, and it should 
always be kept in view. 

2. Being definite, the education should be broad 
and thorough, including all that is finally essential to 
the highest success. 

3. It should be related to the future activities of ^ 
life, in part toward professional success, in part toward 
success as a man. 

Toward human success, the growth of character, 
the college has always done its part. It has not al- 
ways been mindful of the needs of the man as a worker 
in society. To relate knowledge to life has been one 
of its chief problems in recent years. To this end 
the college must adapt its work to the individual man. 
What one mind finds inspiring or helpful is useless to 
another. By means of the element of choice, it has 
been possible to broaden and deepen the work of the 
college and to draw into its range an ever widening 
circle of men. 

To do justice to the business man, the college 
should give him early skill in a few simple subjects, 
which have little value in mental training. The college 
will save his time by teaching these regardless of their 
academic value. It can teach stenography, bookkeep- 
ing and commercial law, as it now teaches woodwork- 
mg, voice culture and punctuation. The student's 
need is the college's justification. For the rest the 
business man will find many of his special needs met 

129 



HIGHER EDUCATION OF BUSINESS MAN 

by studies which are distinctly academic ; among 
these, English composition and English literature, 
American history and modern history of Europe and 
Asia, elementary law, international law, political 
science, economics, finance, German, Spanish and the 
serious drill of at least one of the sciences. Especially 
valuable to the man of affairs is a practical familiarity 
with the methods of scientific research, for by such 
methods alone is research of any kind made effective. 

By sound methods he should investigate such sub- 
jects as these : the effects on business of gold and other 
standards of value ; the effects of protective tariff and 
other tariffs; the results on commerce of friendly and 
unfriendly foreign relations ; the relation of trade to 
the flag; the results, immediate and ultimate, of subsi- 
dies, trusts and bounties; the possibilities of railway 
control; the methods of dignified and economical local 
government; the question of municipal control; the 
meaning of civil service reform. To have worked out 
some serious problem in science by sound methods 
and then to have applied the same methods to the so- 
lution of any one of these problems will be worth more 
to the real business man than ten years of practical ex- 
perience as cash boy, errand boy, floor-walker and 
clerk. 

These subjects and others of like character should 
be studied not didactically, not emotionally, but by 
practical investigation of the lines of actual business. 
To give sound methods of investigation is the highest 

130 



HIGHER EDUCATION OF BUSINESS MAN 

duty of the real university. A system of training 
which misses this should hardly be called education, 
for It is the function of training to disclose the secret 
of power. 

To secure power no experience is so valuable as 
that which may be obtained in college, and four years, 
or even seven years, is a period all too short. Be- 
cause it is short, there should be no waste of time, no 
random effort. All work should look toward the 
final goal, not forgetting of course the needs of per- 
sonal culture. Thus a man may properly turn aside 
from his life study to study Greek or music or botany, 
not because he needs it in his business, but because he 
loves it. 

To the average business man who does not care 
for Latin, Greek or Calculus, the old-fashioned clas- 
sical course of thirty years ago had relatively little 
value, yet even four years of quiet comradery and 
intellectual zest were well worth taking before plung- 
ing into the struggle of life. Many a business man 
regrets that his college course was so narrow. I 
never heard of one who would give up even the little 
outlook on higher things this outworn course of study 
represents. 

So much for what the man of business asks today 
of the university. What in turn can the American 
university of today do for him .'* 

The American university, after its long struggle 
with poverty and tradition, is standing forth as a very 

131 



HIGHER EDUCATION OF BUSINESS MAN 

definite type of institution; very different from the 
English college from which it sprang; very different 
from the German university from which it draws its 
inspiration, yet partaking somewhat of the character 
of each. 
I It has now three principal functions: 

1. That of general culture: to give a scholar's 
horizon some idea of the best that has been thought 
or done in the world's history; to give acquaintance 
with men and women of the present or of the past 
who have stood for noble ideals and hopeful aspira- 
tion. This line of effort constitutes the college work, 
when we use the word college in its traditional mean- 
ing, or in contrast with the university and the profes- 
sional school. 

2. Professional training: the actual drill in the 
knowledge needed in one's profession and the methods 
used in successful practice. This is the work of the 
professional school, to which the college course should 
lead. 

3. University training. The highest form of uni- 
versity work is instruction through investigation. The 
student learns the methods of research through actual 
practice in the use of them. He learns the way to 
truth by an actual extension in some one direction of 
the bounds of human knowledge. The college does 
not pretend to include professional training or scien- 
tific research within the limits of its course of study. 
The university includes both. Here the proper line 



HIGHER EDUCATION OF BUSINESS MAN 

between college and university is drawn. Yet the col- 
lege should forecast the university. In four years we 
cannot compass very much, but in these years the 
college can give, besides the general culture which is 
its main work, the basis of professional training and 
the impulse toward research as well. To this end it 
should encourage the student to keep in mind his final 
career and to shape his work so that mental culture 
shall count as personal effectiveness. By means of 
thorough inductive study in some one line, it should 
introduce the student to methods of research. To 
teach subjects which are listlessly received and which 
are as soon as possible forgotten is a waste of 
time and effort. It is a degradation of the means 
and purpose of higher education. No one should be 
encouraged or allowed to stay in college for per- 
functory work. To go through the motions without 
caring for the realities is an unwholesome kind of 
training. Neither should the college allow itself to be 
used by those to whom the college degree is a mere 
badge of social distinction. The idlers in college con- 
stitute a costly drag on its ambitions. The fees they 
pay are a scanty return for the mischief done by their 
presence. The university is false to its trust if it does 
not relate its work to life and if it spends its strength 
on the stupid, the indolent or the indifferent. There 
are too many real men in search of real education to 
justify tolerance of shams. 

In the practical organization of an American uni- 



HIGHER EDUCATION OF BUSINESS MAN 

versity I cannot see that the needs of business demand 
a separate branch or fundamental division. The course 
of study as it is, is perhaps broad enough, and it can 
easily be made broader without change of organization. 
We do not need a separate school of commerce to ed- 
ucate the business man any more than we need a sepa- 
rate school to train the journalist or the poet or the 
diplomatist. The culture studies necessary are already 
given. For special research in economics, finance and 
politics large provision is already made. It can be 
made larger when necessary. It is not so much the 
things studied in school as the way of looking at 
them which is important. The student needs most of 
all the ability to separate what is true from what is 
plausible, to distinguish induction from deduction. 
The university should not be too ' ' timely ' ' in its re- 
lations to the student. It deals with eternal verities 
and unchanging methods. It is safer for it not to be 
too * ' up-to-date. ' ' To meet each new call as it arises 
is to make a good many false steps. 
►^ The fact that station agents, railway conductors, 
bookkeepers and clerks are not usually college men has 
been lately taken as a serious argument against higher 
education. The simple fact is that the college student 
can do better than to accept such places. If he has 
the right stuff in him he is willing enough to begin 
at the bottom, but it must be the bottom of an as- 
cending series. There must be some prospect ahead. 
You will find the graduate in mining m California 

134 



HIGHER EDUCATION OF BUSINESS MAN 

working for his board in the mines of Angel's Camp 
or Nevada City, but he knows that faithful service in 
the ditch will carry him at one bound past all his un- 
trained competitors. 

If to be a bookkeeper, salesman or floor- walker is 
final, the college man will not often enter the list. 
For such places an apprenticeship as a cashboy or a 
year in a business school may seem more useful than 
four years of Latin and Greek or even of history 
and science. It is worth more if you count not the 
man but his trade. The cashboy' s experience might 
be as helpful to the floor-walker as an exhaustive 
knowledge of the whole business of the firm. It is 
when exceptional eflbrt or exceptional responsibility is 
demanded that training shows itself The exceptional 
man places himself in line for just such possibilities. 

When certain business critics condemn the college 
course for its lack of fitness and practicability, we are 
obliged to ask what kind of college they have in 
mind. There is as much diflerence among American 
colleges as among American railroads or American dry 
goods stores. 

If a foreigner objects to the American railway 
that it has no schedule and never gets anywhere, we 
wonder whether he refers to the New York Central or 
to some branch road in the black belt of the South. 
We wonder, moreover, whether he has ever traveled 
at home. So when the fitness of the American uni- , 
versity is challenged we should like to know whether 

^35 



HIGHER EDUCATION OF BUSINESS MAN 

the critic has Harvard in mind or Michigan, or perhaps 
' ' Valparaiso University, ' ' or the crossroads college 
at Hugginsville. Hartsville University, with two pro- 
fessors, precedes Harvard in our alphabetical lists, and 
Yellville stands next to Yale. 

As a rule, the business man who does not believe 
in colleges has in mind some classical school of his 
boyhood where careless boys were drilled in unwilling 
Latin. As to this, we may as well admit the facts. For 
most practical purposes in life, either of culture or 
action, the Latin grammar, to the average man, is the 
poorest educational stuff the colleges yield. The pre- 
dominance of Latin is a matter of tradition, not of 
experience. Latin, Greek and Calculus have consti- 
tuted for centuries the Tripos or three-legged stool 
which bore up culture in the colleges of England. 
Latin formed the chief part of the college course of 
thirty years ago, and the business man of today who 
thinks university building an ' ' absurd fad ' ' has in mind 
the narrow work of the little colleges where he was a 
boy. In so far as their work was efficient their power 
lay in the influence of personality rather than in the 
subjects they taught. ' ' A log with Mark Hopkins 
at one end of it and himself at the other" was 
Garfield's conception of a university. It was said 
of Dr. Nott, of Union College, that "he took the 
sweepings of other colleges and sent them back to 
society pure gold. ' ' This was the influence of a great 
personality, not of the Latin he taught, nor of his out- 

n6 



HIGHER EDUCATION OF BUSINESS MAN 

worn metaphysics. With such narrow ideas of the 
college as a school of Latin exercises it is no wonder 
that many business men do not believe in it. They do 
not find such a school useful in their business nor in 
their lives. It is not very useful, in itself, except for 
the rare man, "the Greek-minded man, the Roman- 
minded," as Emerson calls him. I did not care for it, 
myself, when it was first offered to me more than 
thirty years ago. Then I turned aside from classical 
Yale to the new hope of Cornell, where I could study 
plants and rocks as well as Latin and Greek, and with 
equal opportunity and equal encouragement. The 
university of today recognizes the supreme majesty of 
Greek for those who can enter into its spirit. It rec- 
ognizes the large helpfulness of Latin in literary 
matters. It gives far more attention to higher mathe- 
matics than the classical college did, but for another 
purpose. Its courses in engineering rest upon it. Its 
range of studies is now broadened and enriched so as 
to include whatever in any line the real student can 
demand for any real purpose. 

The professions that the university has especially 
cherished have been those of law, medicme and theol- 
ogy. To these, in America, have been added engi- 
neering and teaching. For direct training in business 
little demand has been made, perhaps because the 
university gives already nearly all that can be asked 
except practical experience. This it cannot yield, 
though it can give better things. A very successful 



HIGHER EDUCATION OF BUSINESS MAN 

mining engineer has lately maintained that the student 
in the university has no time to spend on ' ' practical 
work ' ' in mining methods. From the university he 
gains inductive science and deductive theory, both to 
be had from the university alone. He will have plenty 
of time later to get practical acquaintance with crushers 
and dumps. If he spends his precious university 
time on practical details he will not be ready when 
higher demands are made on him. 

In business, as in mining, the university can save 
the student' s time by giving him methods of work and 
methods of thought, which outweigh the value of lab- 
oratory practice in the counting-house or the sales- 
room. 

It is very clear that the university-trained engineer 
has an immense advantage over his self-taught com- 
petitor. Not long since, I had an application from a 
mine in Siskiyou County, California, for a trained min- 
ing engineer. The writer went on to say, with much 
severe language, which I shall leave blank, that he had 
had enough of forty-niners — of practical mining men 
— of men who knew the business from the bottom. 
He had lost $6,000 in a month through their advice, 
and he wanted ' ' some one who knew the business, not 
from the bottom up, but from the top downward." 

The late Irving M. Scott, of the Union Iron 
Works of San Francisco, the builder of the * * Ore- 
gon," had among his employees numerous graduates 
of Cornell and Stanford. He told me once that he 

138 



HIGHER EDUCATION OF BUSINESS MAN 

regarded a university man as worth 50 per cent more 
than a man who has come up to the same level by 
practical experience. 

A certain Stanford mining engineer six years out 
of college now commands a salary greater than that 
of all the self-taught mining engineers in California 
put together. This is a very exceptional case, but 
there are many who approach it. I am told that of the 
Stanford electrical engineers there is not one who is 
not ' * getting a larger salary then he deserves. " If 
this is true, it is because the engineers with whom 
they compete are less than adequate. In civil en- 
gineering the Western railroads give preference to 
college men. There is no prejudice against them such 
as exists sometimes in the East, because Western boys 
have more practical experience than Eastern boys. 
There have been breaks in their school life. Before 
going to college they have already had some contact 
with the inevitable and have learned patience, courage 
and common sense. They enter college later, but in 
the meantime they have learned to break horses and 
to keep account books and to be masters of them- 
selves in any situation. If more necessity for self- 
help existed in our secondary schools we should turn 
out a wiser brand of college students. A little con- 
tact with the world is a great help in clearing the vision. 
The young man who sees things as they are will 
begin at the bottom with perfect cheerfulness. He 
knows the way to the top, where there is always room, 
139 



HIGHER EDUCATION OF BUSINESS MAN 

which can never be found by the artisan who operates 
by rule of thumb. 

A large percentage of the college men of today, 
especially in our state universities, work their own 
way through college, and these may have a more ac- 
curate and varied knowledge of affairs than is pos- 
sessed by half the heads of business houses. A few 
days ago such a man, lately graduated from Stanford, 
was chosen to an important clerkship in a large busi- 
ness house in San Francisco, being given precedence 
over 200 practical, experienced or business school 
competitors. 

A recent writer asks, " Would you advise a young 
man with $5,000 capital, intending to become a busi- 
ness man, to spend that sum first on a college educa- 
tion?" Certainly not. Let him work in vacation 
and use only the interest of $5,000, and he will have 
both his education and his principal when he gets 
through. That some foolish parents spend a sum 
like this each year on an effeminate or luxurious boy, 
does not concern him. He can get a better educa- 
tion in the same college by his own unaided efforts. 
If our colleges insist that their students must get down 
to work or go home, we should hear less of lavish ex- 
penditure or of the complaint that colleges are for 
rich men only. It is the college where the students 
are poor that will some day have the rich alumni. 

We know, of course, that business instincts are 
inborn, not created by education. Some college 

140 



HIGHER EDUCATION OF BUSINESS MAN 



graduates could never succeed in business, as others 
could not succeed in engineering or in music. In the 
lower grades of employment some will succeed, others 
will not. The effeminate college life now passing out 
of vogue in these strenuous times was poor training for 
any purpose. It is now receiving less and less toler- 
ance. When the demand for something above the 
routine arises, the college graduate is always the picked 
man. This fact has shown itself in the volunteer army 
as in all other ranks of effort. Moreover, the young 
men of force and action today are in college. They 
cannot afford to do without a college course. Thirty 
years ago this was not the case. Except for social 
and athletic matters the classical college of that time 
offered few attractions. 

What the university training has done for mechan- 
ical arts is clear, convincing, tremendous. It can do 
the same for business, if men of business care to ask 
its help. But to this end it must train men for busi- 
ness by means of men who can use the methods of 
science in the study of business. The university must 
take its duty in this regard more seriously. We must 
demand more serious preparation on the part of our 
professors who deal with topics of the time. I doubt 
if half the men who teach economics, finance or so- 
ciology in American colleges today know what scien- 
tific research actually means. In getting up a subject 
the methods of the journalist are quicker and easier 
to handle. Besides, plausibility looks as well as 

141 



HIGHER EDUCATION OF BUSINESS MAN 

truth. It makes a bigger book and has ten times the 
sale. Until the university frees itself from that form 
of cleverness which masquerades as science, whether 
conservative, sensational or emotional, it will not do 
its part toward the solution of our national problems. 
Smartness without training makes bricks without straw. 

The whole nature of American business is chang- 
ing these changing years, The successful business 
man cannot run his own little shop. He must be part 
of a large system. The new conditions demand a va- 
riety of talent, a range of adaptation, a breadth of 
vision, far beyond that of even ten or twenty years 
ago. It is the era of great projects, of great achieve- 
ments, of great cooperation, and in this each must 
be ready to take the part assigned to him. Whatever 
we may think of the trust or combination, something 
of the sort is here to stay. Combination demands 
better training than individual shopkeeping. It de- 
mands a higher degree of honesty. A great business 
cannot rest on sharp practice. It must be above all 
the devices of the shopkeeper or the drummer. Its 
profit must lie in the dealer's legitimate percentage, 
not in the results of haggling or bargaining. The 
great fortunes of the future will be as great as in the 
past, but they must be won in a more systematic way. 
Courage and foresight must take the place of smart- 
ness and selfishness, and our universities will supply 
men of courage and foresight as this demand arises. 

The business of today and of the future demands 

142 



HIGHER EDUCATION OF BUSINESS MAN 

a higher grade of intelligence and a more highly spe- 
cialized ability than the individual commerce of a gen- 
eration ago. It therefore demands higher training. 
It demands also a higher morality. No great business 
can rest permanently on a cutthroat basis. In spite 
of contrary appearances, business morality is on a 
higher plane in these days of vast combinations than 
it was when each merchant hunted, spider fashion, for 
his prey, and clerks were paid to make black seem 
white and to lead the unwillmg customer to buy what 
he did not want. The profits of business are now the 
legitimate gain of handling rather than the fluctuating 
rewards of smartness. 

In many ways our hope for relief from municipal 
corruption and executive imbecility rests with our 
young business men. Effective work for Civil Service 
Reform is done, not by societies of preachers, college 
professors, philanthropists or agitators, but by business 
men who find that business principles in public admin- 
istration are necessary to their own business. In such 
organizations the college man of business makes hmi- 
self felt. I know something of merchants' associa- 
tions. East and West, and their far-seeing, practical, 
virile way of taking hold of things is full of hope for 
the future. In municipal reform we need first the 
growth of the spirit of decency, which will demand 
economy and dignity, and will be satisfied with noth- 
ing else. Little is gained by sensational, emotional 
spectacular reform. To dethrone a boss or send 

H3 



HIGHER EDUCATION OF BUSINESS MAN 

a few bad councilmen to jail avails little if we stop 
there. 

It is said that as Chicago has a great university 
every great city needs one for the purification of her 
public life. This may be true, but the influence of the 
university cannot be direct and immediate. Impas- 
sioned university extension lectures on civic reform 
are not worth the atmosphere they consume. To 
move the public and to entertain it are two different 
things, and the orator is likely to choose the line of 
least resistance. The work of the university professor 
is best accomplished on his own ground. He sways 
the next generation, and this vantage-ground he must 
give up if he works for immediate results. The uni- 
versity has a higher function than that of agitating for 
virtue. By dint of sound methods and endless pa- 
tience it should send forth men who can act for virtue, 
not merely agitate. Its influence in politics is felt not 
in direct efforts in the primary, on the rostrum, or in 
the journals, but in its training of men. 

Of all the business men of the world, those sent 
out from the American university are the most alert, 
the most enlightened, the keenest of mind and most 
effective in action. These are our captains of indus- 
try, and the young fellows who have worked their way 
from the streets to the counting-room as cash boys, 
errand boys and apprentices, must continue, a few 
bright individuals excepted, to plod along in the ranks. 

A recent writer, Mr. R. T. Crane, shows to his 
144 



HIGHER EDUCATION OF BUSINESS MAN 

own satisfaction that a college graduate in business 
never gets his money back. To this he adds his own 
opinion that the money one gets is ' ' seventy-five per 
cent of the whole thing." By "the whole thing," 
he means all joy and satisfaction, all happiness and 
success in the world. 

It may be, after all, the mission of the university to 
give such a view of life and business that seventy-five 
per cent of ' ' the whole thing ' ' cannot be measured in 
money. If the possession of wealth is seventy- five per 
cent of the whole thing, what a world of enjoyment 
some of us college men have had to which we are not 
entitled! With ' ' health and a day, ' ' we have ' ' put the 
pomp of emperors to shame," never dreaming that the 
value of life was not expressed in terms of achievement 
and enjoyment. 



145 



VIII. 

A BUSINESS MAN'S CONCEPTION 
OF THE UNIVERSITY. 

ONE of the greatest of the joys we call aca- 
demic is that of looking into the eyes of 
young men and young women with the feel- 
ing that some small part at least of their 
strength is the work of our own minds and hearts. 
Something of the teacher we see in the student, and, 
from master to pupil, there is a chain of heredity as 
real, if not as literally exact, as the bodily likeness 
that runs in the blood. 

To the founder of a university a kindred satisfac- 
tion is given, and not for a day or a period only, but 
for "changing cycles of years." It is his part to 
exchange gold for abundance of life. It is his to 
work mightily in the affairs of men centuries after his 
personal opinions and influence are forgotten. The 
moral value of the possession of wealth lies in the use 
to which it is put. There can be no better use than 
that of making young men and young women wise and 
clean and strong. 

Of this right use of money your lives and mine 
have been in large degree a product. This fact gives 

146 



CONCEPTION OF THE UNIVERSITY 

me the theme of my discourse this morning, the work 
of Leland Stanford Junior University as it existed in 
the mind of the founder before teachers or students 
came to Palo Alto to make it real. 

Our university is now just ten years old. Of all 
foundations in America it is the youngest save one, 
the University of Chicago. Yet as universities go, in 
our New World, it has attained its majority. It is old 
enough to have a character and to be judged by it. 

For the broad principles of education all univer- 
sities stand, but each one works out its function in its 
own fashion. It is this fashion, this turn of method, 
which sets off one from another, which gives each its 
individual character. What this character shall be no 
one force can determine. Its final course is a resultant 
of the initial impulse, the ideals it develops, and the 
resistance of its surroundings. No one influence can 
control the final outcome. No one will can determine 
the result, where a thousand other wills are also active. 
Nor is the environment finally potent. Environment is 
inert, except as the individual wills are pitted against it. 

In our own university the initial impulse came from 
the heart and the brain of Leland Stanford. The ideals 
it has upheld were his before they were ours. They 
had been carefully wrought out in his mind before he 
called like-minded m.en to his service to carry them into 
action. It is well, once in a while, to recall this fact. 

I need not repeat the story of Mr. Stanford's life. 
He was long the most conspicuous public man of 

H7 



CONCEPTION OF THE UNIVERSITY 

California. He was her war governor, wise and 
patient, and respected of all men before his railroad 
enterprises made him the wealthiest citizen of the 
state. His wide popularity, the influence, personal 
and political, which he acquired, did not arise from his 
wealth. Wealth, influence and popularity sprang 
alike from his personal qualities, his persistence, his 
integrity, his long-headedness and his simplicity, 
which kept him always in touch with the people. 

"He was active," it was said, " when other men 
were idle ; he was generous when others were grasp- 
ing ; he was lofty when other men were base." He 
was in all relations of life thoroughly a man, and of 
that type — simple, earnest, courageous, effective — 
which we like to call American. 

The need to train his own son first turned his 
thoughts to educational matters. His early acquaint- 
ance with Professor Agassiz, perhaps the greatest of 
American teachers, helped to direct these thoughts in- 
to channels of wisdom. From Agassiz he derived a 
realizing sense of the possibilities of human knowledge 
and the impelling force of man's intellectual needs, — 
that hunger and thirst after truth which only the student 
knows. "Man's physical needs are slight," he said, 
"but his intellectual needs are bounded only by his 
capacity to conceive. " In the darkness of bereavement 
the thought came to Mr. Stanford that the duty of his 
life should be to carry his plans of educating his own son 
into effect for the sons of others. After the long vigil 

148 



CONCEPTION OF THE UNIVERSITY 

of a dreary night he awoke with these words on his 
lips: " The children of California shall be my chil- 
dren." And with characteristic energy he made this 
vision fact. Articles of endowment were drawn up, 
lands and buildings and teachers were provided, and 
on the first day of October, 1891, the new university 
opened its doors to the children of California, and to 
those of the rest of the world as well. 

With all bright auspices of earth and sky, of hope 
and purpose, of wealth and generosity, the new uni- 
versity began. In its history all who are here today 
have taken some part. With many of us it represents 
the best portion of our lives. Of this I do not now 
wish to speak, but rather to discuss the original impulse 
of the founder. What was Leland Stanford's idea of 
a university, its work and life ? 

We learn, first, that he would leave the university 
free to grow with the coming ages. He would extend 
no dead hand from the grave to limit its activities or to 
control its movements. The deed of gift is in favor of 
education pure and simple. It has no hampering 
clause, and the only end in view is that of the help of 
humanity through the extension of knowledge. ' ' We 
hope," he said, "that this institution will endure 
through long ages. Provisions regarding details of 
management, however wise they may be at present, 
might prove to be mischievous under conditions which 
may arise in the future." 

As a practical man, accustomed to go to the heart 
149 



CONCEPTION OF THE UNIVERSITY 

of things, Mr. Stanford had little respect for educa- 
tional millinery, and for the conventionalities which 
have grown up about the great institutions of the Old 
World, He saw clearly the value of thoroughness, 
the need of freedom, the individuality of development, 
but cared little for the machinery by which these ends 
were achieved. So it was decreed that the new uni- 
versity should be simple in its organization, with only 
those details of structure which the needs of the times 
should develop within it. If it must have precedents 
and traditions, it must make its own. ' ' I would have 
this institution, ' ' he said, ' ' help to fit men and women 
for usefulness in this life, by increasing their individ- 
ual power of production, and by making them good 
company for themselves and others. ' ' 

A friend at Aix-les-Bains once argued with him 
that there is already too much education, and that to 
increase it further is simply to swell the volume of dis- 
content. "I insisted," Mr. Stanford said, "that 
there cannot be too much education any more than 
too much health or intelligence. Do you happen to 
know any man who has been too well educated? 
Where does he live ? What is his address ? If you 
cannot find such a man, you cannot speak of over- 
education." There has been unwise education or mis- 
fit education. Some highly educated men are neither 
wise nor fit, and there is a kind of education that 
comes from experience and not from books. But with 
all this, too thorough or too good a training no one 

ISO 



CONCEPTION OF THE UNIVERSITY 

ever had. Ignorance is shadow. Education is light. 
Nothing is more unpractical than darkness, nothing is 
more practical than sunshine. 

Mr. Stanford believed that no educational system 
could be complete in which entrance to the university 
was a detached privilege of the chosen few. He be- 
lieved in the unbroken ladder from the kindergarten 
to the university, a ladder that each one should be free 
to climb, as far as his ability or energy should permit. 
He believed, with Ian Maclaren, in keeping the path 
well trodden from the farmhouse to the university. 
He asked that this sentence be placed on the University 
Register : "A generous education is the birthright of 
every man and woman in America." In Emerson's 
words, "America means opportunity, ' ' and opportunity 
comes through training to receive it. To have such 
training is to be truly free born, and this is the birth- 
right of each child of the Republic. 

Science is knowledge tested and set in order, and 
each advance in knowledge carries with it a corre- 
sponding increment of power. A machine, to Mr. 
Stanford, was not a mere saver of labor, but an aid to 
labor, increasing its efficiency and therefore adding to 
the value of men. By greater knowledge of the forces 
of nature we acquire greater skill in turning these 
forces into man's service through the harness of ma- 
chinery. In increase of scientific knowledge he found 
the secret of human power. An education which 
does not disclose the secret of power is unworthy of 

151 



CONCEPTION OF THE UNIVERSITY 

the name. ' ' We may always advance toward the in- 
finite, ' ' was a favorite saying of his. He could find 
no limit to the development of civilization. The 
possibilities of human progress expressed to him the 
measure of infinite goodness. In his own words, ' ' The 
beneficence of the Creator toward man on earth, and 
the possibilities of humanity, are one and the same. ' ' 

But in his forecast of the myriad triumphs of ap- 
plied science, he did not forget that knowledge itself 
must precede any use man can make of it. Pure sci- 
ence must always go before applied science. The 
higher forms of thought have their place in mental 
growth as necessities in the concrete preparation for 
action. 

In the new university he decreed that ' ' the work 
in applied sciences shall be carried on side by side with 
that in the pure sciences and the humanities, and that, 
so far as may be, all lines of work included in the plan 
of the university shall be equally fostered." 

No other university has recognized so distinctly 
the absolute democracy of knowledge. The earlier 
traditions of Cornell pointed in this direction, and for 
this reason Mr. Stanford found in Cornell, rather than 
in Harvard, Yale, Johns Hopkins, or Michigan, the 
nearest existing approach to his own ideal. It was 
Ezra Cornell's hope "to found an institution where 
any person could find instruction in any study." 
Cornell and Stanford, in so far as they are loyal to 
these traditions, know neither favored students nor 

153 



CONCEPTION OF THE UNIVERSITY 

favored studies. No class of men are chosen to the 
exclusion of others, and no class of studies is given a 
fallacious importance through force of academic pres- 
sure or through inertia of academic tradition. While 
various kinds of knowledge are of varying worth to 
different persons, each has its own value to the world, 
and the value to the individual must be determined in 
each case by itself. The university should be no re- 
specter of persons. It is not called on to approve or 
condemn the various orders of genius that come to it 
for training. There has been no greater hindrance to 
educational progress than the hierarchy of studies, the 
fiction that certain kinds of work had an invisible 
value not to be measured by tangible results. 

Mr. Stanford shared with Agassiz the idea that the 
essential part of education was a thorough knowledge 
of some one thing, so firmly held as to be effective 
for practical results. He believed in early choice of 
profession, in so far as early choice could be wise 
choice. The course of study, however broad and 
however long, should in all its parts look toward the 
final end of effective life. The profession chosen 
early gives a purpose and stimulus to all the interme- 
diate courses of training. He saw clearly the need 
of individualism in education, and that courses of 
study should be built around the individual man as he 
is. The supposed needs of the average man as de- 
veloped by a consensus of educational philosophers do 
not suffice for the actual man as he is in actual life 

IS3 



CONCEPTION OF THE UNIVERSITY 

We must be fed with the food that is good for us. It 
is for us that it must be adapted, not for some average 
man in some average age. The ready-made curricu- 
lum belongs to the same category as ready-made 
clothing. It is something cheap and easy for the man 
without individual needs. 

Mr. Stanford's belief that literature and engineer- 
ing should be pursued side by side was shown by his 
wish to provide for both with equal generosity. And 
the students of each are the gainers by this relation. 
The devotee of classical culture is strengthened by his 
association with men to whom their college work is 
part of the serious duty of life. The student of en- 
gineering stands with both feet on the ground. His 
success in life depends on the exactness of his knowl- 
edge of machinery and of the basic principles of me- 
chanics and mathematics. He must be in dead earnest 
if he would succeed at all. On the other hand, the 
student of realities gains by his association with the 
poet, the philosopher and the artist. The finer as- 
pects of life are brought to his notice, and from this 
association results tolerance and breadth of sympathy. 

That women should receive higher education as 
well as men was an axiom to Mr. Stanford. Co-edu- 
cation was taken for granted from the first, and the 
young women of Stanford have never had to question 
the friendliness of their welcome. "We have pro- 
vided, ' ' Mr. Stanford says, ' ' in the articles of endow- 
ment, that the education of the sexes shall be equal — 

154 



CONCEPTION OF THE UNIVERSITY 

deeming it of special importance that those who are 
to be the mothers of a future generation shall be fitted 
to mold and direct the infantile mind at its most critical 
period." 

The leading argument for co-education is akin to 
the one just indicated for the union in one institution 
of the various lines of literature, art, science and ap- 
plied technology. 

In women's education, as planned for women 
alone, the tendency is toward the study of beauty and 
order. Literature and language take precedence over 
science. Expression is valued more highly than ac- 
tion. In carrying this to an extreme, the necessary 
relation of thought to action becomes obscured. The 
scholarship developed tends to be ineffective, because 
it is not related to life. The educated woman is likely 
to master technique, rather than art; method, rather 
than substance. She may know a good deal, but be 
able to do nothing. Often her views of life must un- 
dergo painful changes before she can find her place in 
the world. 

In schools for men alone, the reverse condition 
often obtains. The sense of reality obscures the ele- 
ments of beauty and fitness. It is of great advantage 
to both men and women to meet on a plane of equal- 
ity in education. Women are brought into contact 
with men who can do things — men in whom the sense 
of reality is strong, and who have definite views in 
life. This influence affects them for good. It turns 

155 



CONCEPTION OF THE UNIVERSITY 

them away from sentimentalism. It is opposed to 
unwholesome forms of hysterical friendship. It gives 
tone to their religious thoughts and impulses. Above 
all, it tends to encourage action governed by ideals, 
as opposed to that resting on caprice. It gives them 
better standards of what is possible and impossible, 
when the responsibility for action is thrown upon them. 

In like manner, the association with wise, sane 
and healthy women has its value for young men. 
This value has never been fully realized, even by the 
strongest advocates of co-education. It raises their 
ideal of womanhood, and the highest manhood must 
be associated with such an ideal. 

It was the idea of the founders that each student 
should be taught the value of economy, — that lavish 
expenditures bring neither happiness nor success. ' 'A 
student, ' ' it was said by one of the founders, ' ' will be 
better fitted to battle with the trials and tribulations 
of life, if he (or she) has been taught the worth of 
money, the necessity of saving, and of overcoming a 
desire to imitate those who are better off in the world's 
goods. For, when he has learned how to save and 
how to control inordinate desires, he will be relatively 
rich. During the past three and a half years of close 
observation on my part, the importance of economy 
has impressed itself forcibly upon me, and I wish it to 
be taught to all students of the university. Nature 
has made the surroundings of the university beautiful, 
and the substantial character of the buildings gives 

156 



CONCEPTION OF THE UNIVERSITY 



them an appearance of luxury. I wish this natural 
beauty and comparative luxury to impress upon the 
students the necessity of their preservation for the 
generations that are to follow. The lesson thus taught 
will remain with them through hfe and help them to 
teach the lesson to others. The university buildings 
and grounds are for their use while students, in trust 
for students to come." 

The value of the study of political and social 
science as a remedy for defects of government was 
clearly seen by Mr. Stanford. "All governments," 
he said, ' ' are governments by public opinion, and in 
the long run every people is as well governed as it 
deserves." Hence increase of knowledge brings 
about better government. For help in such matters 
the people have a right to look to their universities 
and university men. It was his theory that the art of 
government is still in its infancy. ' ' Legislation has 
not, as a rule, been against the people, but it has 
failed to do all the good it might." "No greater 
blow can be struck at labor than that which renders 
its products insecure. ' ' In the extension of voluntary 
cooperation, he saw a remedy for many present ills, as 
he saw in the law of mutual help the essence of our 
Christian civilization. He said, in laying the corner- 
stone: " Out of these suggestions grows the consid- 
eration of the great advantages, especially to the labor- 
ing man, of cooperation, by which each individual 
has the benefit of the intellectual and physical forces 

157 



CONCEPTION OF THE UNIVERSITY 

of his associates. It is by the intelligent application 
of these principles that there will be found the greatest 
lever to elevate the mass of humanity, and laws 
should be formed to protect and develop cooperative 
associations. . . . They will accomplish all that 
is sought to be secured by labor leagues, trades unions 
and other federations of workmen, and will be free 
from the objection of even impliedly attempting to 
take the unauthorized or wrongful control of the prop- 
erty, capital, or time of others." 

One result of voluntary cooperation, in Mr. Stan- 
ford's view, would be the development of the spirit of 
loyalty, the most precious tribute of the laboring man 
in any grade, in any field, to the interest or cause 
which he serves. One great evil of the present era 
of gigantic industrial organizations is that it takes no 
account of the spirit of loyalty, without which no man 
can do his best work. The huge trust does away with 
the feeling of personal association. The equally huge 
trades union, in many of its operations, strikes directly 
at the personality of the individual workman. It 
makes him merely a pawn to be moved hither and 
thither in the current of industrial war. In the long 
run, no enterprise can flourish, unless those who carry 
it on throw themselves, heart and soul, into its service. 
On the other hand, no one can do a greater injury to 
the cause of labor than to take loyalty out of the cate- 
gory of working virtues. It is one of the traditional 
good traits of the healthy college man to be loyal to 

158 



CONCEPTION OF THE UNIVERSITY 

his college. This virtue Mr. Stanford would have 
cultivated in all effective ways, and in loyalty on both 
sides he would find a practical solution of most of the 
labor troubles of today. That he carried his ideas 
into his own practice is shown by the unflinching devo- 
tion of all his own employees of whatever grade 
throughout his life. They were taught to believe in 
him, to believe in the worth of their own work, and 
thus to have respect for themselves. Much of the dis- 
content of the day has its origin in lack of self-respect. 
The pawn that is moved in the game of sympathetic 
strike has no control over his own actions, and there- 
fore no respect for his own motives. The develop- 
ment of intelligent, voluntary cooperation, in the long 
run, must make the workman more than a machine. 
If he is such, in the long run again, he will receive 
whatever he deserves. He will be a factor in civiliza- 
tion, which the unskilled, unthinking laborer is not. 

The great economic waste in labor often engaged 
Mr. Stanford's attention, and he found its remedy in 
education. "Once," he said, "the great struggle of 
labor was to supply the necessities of life; now, but a 
small portion of our people are so engaged. Food, 
clothing and shelter are common in our country to 
every provident person, excepting, of course, in occa- 
sional accidental cases. The great demand for labpr 
is to supply what may be termed intellectual wants, 
to which there is no limit, except that of intelligence 
to conceive. If all the relations and obligations of 

159 



CONCEPTION OF THE UNIVERSITY 

man were properly understood, it would not be neces- 
sary for people to make a burden of labor. The great 
masses of the toilers now are compelled to perform 
such an amount of labor as makes life often wearisome. 
An intelligent system of education would correct this 
inequality. It would make the humblest laborer's 
work more valuable, it would increase both the demand 
and supply for skilled labor, and reduce the number of 
the non-producing class. It would dignify labor, and 
ultimately would go far to wipe out the mere distinc- 
tions of wealth and ancestry. It would achieve a blood- 
less revolution and establish a republic of industry, 
merit and learning. 

" How near to that state we may be, or how far 
from it, we cannot now tell. It seems very far when 
we contemplate the great standing armies of Europe, 
where over five millions of men (or about one for 
every twelve adult males) are marching about with 
guns on their shoulders to preserve the peace of the 
nations, while hovering near them is an innumerable 
force of police to preserve the peace of individuals; 
but when we remember the possibilities of civilization 
and the power of education, we can foresee a time \/hen 
these soldiers and policemen shall be changed to use- 
ful, producing citizens, engaged in lifting the burdens 
of the people instead of increasing them. And yet, ex- 
travagant as are the nations of Europe in standing 
armies and preparations for war, their extravagance in 
the waste of labor is still greater. Education, by 

i6o 



CONCEPTION OF THE UNIVERSITY 

teaching the intelligent use of machinery, is the only- 
remedy for such waste. ' ' 

That the work of the university should be essential- 
ly specialized, fitting the individual for definite forms 
of higher usefulness, was an idea constantly present 
with Mr. Stanford. He had no interest in general 
education as an end in itself. He had no desire to fit 
men for the life of leisure, or for any life which did 
not involve a close adaptation of means to ends. 

That the new university would in time attract great 
numbers of students, Mr. Stanford believed as a mat- 
ter of course, although he found few California teach- 
ers who shared his optimism. But he was never de- 
ceived with the cheap test of numbers in estimating the 
value of institutions. He knew that a few hundred 
men well trained and under high influences would 
count for more than as many thousands, hurried in 
droves over a ready-made curriculum by young tutors, 
themselves scarcely out of college. So it was decreed 
that numbers for numbers' sake should never be a goal 
of Stanford University. And he further made the 
practical request that not one dollar directly or in- 
directly should be spent in advertising. The university 
has no goods for which it is anxious to find customers. 

Mr. Stanford insisted as a vital principle that the 
university exists for the benefit of its students, present, 
past and future. It has no existence or function save 
as an instrument of education. To this principle all 
others should be subordinate. In his opening address, 
i6i 



CONCEPTION OF THE UNIVERSITY 

Mr. Stanford said to the students of the Pioneer Class: 
' ' You are the most important factor in this university. 
It is for your benefit that it has been established. ' ' 

The greatest need of the student is the teacher. 
Mr. Stanford said : "In order that the president may 
have the assistance of a competent staff of professors, 
we have provided that the best talent obtainable shall 
be procured and that liberal compensation shall always 
be offered. ' ' Again he said : ' ' Ample endowment may 
have been provided, intelligent management may se- 
cure large income, students may present themselves in 
numbers, but in the end the faculty makes or mars the 
university. ' ' 

Compared with the character of the faculty, every 
other element in the university is of relatively Httle 
importance. Great teachers make a university great. 
The great teacher must always leave a great mark 
on every youth with whom he comes in contact. 
The chief duty of the college president is the choice 
of teachers. If he has learned the art of surround- 
ing himself with men who are clean, sane and schol- 
arly, all other matters of university administration 
will take care of themselves. He cannot fail if he 
has good men around him. And in the choice of 
teachers the element of personal sanity seemed of 
first importance to Mr. Stanford — the ability to see 
things as they are. The university chair should be a 
center of clear seeing from which right acting should 
radiate. 

i6z 



CONCEPTION OF THE UNIVERSITY 

That the university should be a center of cooper- 
ating research was a vital element in Mr. Stanford's 
plans. A man content with the truth that now is, and 
without ambition to venture into the unknown, should 
not hold the chair of a university professor. The in- 
centive for research should be within, not without. Its 
motive should be not the desire of individual fame, but 
the love of knowledge. 

In proportion to the extent to which it widens the 
range of human knowledge and of human power, in 
that degree does an institution deserve the name of 
university. The value of its original work is the best 
single test by which a university may be judged; and 
as it is the best, so is it also the severest. 

In its public relations, the university stands for 
infinite patience, the calm testing of ideas and ideals. 
It conducts no propaganda, it controls no affairs of 
business or of public action. It is the judge of the 
principles of wisdom and the ways of nature. The 
details of action it must leave to men whose business 
it is to guide the currents of the moment. 

When Leland Stanford Junior University was 
founded, it was provided that in its religious life, as in 
its scientific investigations, it should be wholly free 
from outside control. No religious sect or organi- 
zation and no group of organizations should have 
dominion over it. The university should exist for its 
own sake, to carry out its own purposes, and to bring 
out its own results in its own way. 
163 



CONCEPTION OF THE UNIVERSITY 

In this regard the die is cast, once for all. The 
choice of the founders of the university was deliberate 
and final. They chose the path of intellectual and 
religious freedom, in the very interest of religion 
itself. Religion is devotion in action. In its higher 
reaches it must be individual, because it is a function 
of the individual soul which must stand in perpetual 
protest against the religion that finds its end in forms 
and ceremonies and organizations. 

Religion must form the axis of personal character, 
and its prime importance the university cannot ignore. 
To attain its culture it may use indirect rather than 
direct means, the influence of effort and character 
rather than the imposition of forms. To accept eccle- 
siastical help is to invite ecclesiastical control toward 
ecclesiastical ends. In the Grant of Endowment it 
was required that the trustees should ' ' prohibit secta- 
rian instruction, but have taught in the university the 
immortality of the soul, the existence of an all-wise 
and benevolent Creator, and obedience to his laws as 
the highest duty of man." 

This requirement was a simple reflection of Mr. 
Stanford's own religious character, as expressed in 
the words of one very near to him: " If a firm belief 
in a beneficent Creator, a profound admiration for 
Jesus of Nazareth and his teachings, and the certainty 
of a personal life hereafter, constitute religion, then 
Leland Stanford was a religious man. The narrow 
walls of a creed could not confine him; therefore he 

164 



CONCEPTION OF THE UNIVERSITY 

was not a professed member of any church, for in 
each confession of faith he found something to which 
he could not subscribe. But for the principles of 
religion he had a profound veneration; in his heart 
were the true sentiments of Christianity, and he often 
said that in his opinion the Golden Rule was the 
corner-stone of all true religion. ' ' 

The founders believed truly that freedom of 
thought and action would promote morality and reli- 
gion, that a deeper, fuller religious life would arise 
from the growth of the individual, that only where the 
' ' winds of freedom ' ' blow will spring up the highest 
type of religious development. For character is 
formed from within by the efforts and strivings and 
aspirations of the individual. It can never be imposed 
from without. The will is made strong from choosing 
the right, not irom having right action enforced upon 
it. The Hfe of man is "made beautiful and sweet 
through self-devotion and through self-restraint." 
But this must be chosen voluntarily, else it fails of its 
purpose. 

The growth of Leland Stanford Junior University 
must remain the best evidence of its founder's wisdom. 
He had the sagacity to recognize the value of higher 
education and the patriotism to give the rewards of a 
successful life to its advancement. He had the rarer 
wisdom to discriminate between the real and the tem- 
porary in university organization and management, 
and his provision is for the genuine and the permanent, 

165 



CONCEPTION OF THE UNIVERSITY 

not for that "which speedily passes away." Still 
more rare, he had the forethought to leave to each 
succeeding generation the duty of adapting its details 
of administration and methods to the needs of the 
time. 

If the founder we love and the founder whose 
memory we revere had said, "We will found a 
university so strong that it may endure for all the 
centuries, whose organization shall be so free and 
flexible that in each age it shall reflect the best spirit 
of the time," they could not have given it greater 
freedom of development than it has today. For the 
glory of the university must lie in its freedom, in that 
freedom which cannot fall into license, nor lose itself 
in waywardness, — that freedom which knows but one 
bond or control, the eternal truth of God. 



1 66 



IX. 

THE UNIVERSITY AND THE 
COMMON MAN.* 

IF YOU ever climb the hill above the Palace of 
Justice in the city of Brussels, you will find in a 
little house near the summit a strange gallery of 
pictures wrought by the artist, Wiertz. Among 
the nightmare products of his morbid genius there is 
one canvas which commands attention. It is "The 
Man of the Future and the Things of the Past." It 
represents a naturalist holding in his right hand a large 
magnifying-glass, while crowded in his left hand are 
Napoleon and his marshals with their cannon and battle 
flags and all the paraphernalia of the great campaigns. 
He examines these through the glass, while a child by 
his side looks on in open-eyed wonder, to see what a 
grown man can find to care for in such little things as 
these. 

This allegory, painted within a dozen miles of the 
field of Waterloo and but a few years after the echoes 
of its cannon had ceased to reverberate, was meant to 
show how small the place Napoleon really filled in his- 
tory. When the smoke of battle faded away, with it 

* Address at the inauguration of Dr Edward Pierrepont Graves. 
167 



UNIVERSITY AND COMMON MAN 

vanished the great empire of Napoleon. His con- 
quests, his victories, his glory and his defeat were but 
side episodes in the march of events in the nineteenth 
century. Now as this century comes to its end, we 
find remaining in the social fabric of European civiliza- 
tion not a trace to show that the great warrior ever 
lived. 

In all our study of history we find that the kings 
are slipping into the background. Once English his- 
tory was divided into eras, each named for the king 
in power: the era of Edward I, of Edward III, of 
Henry V, of Elizabeth and the rest. Now English 
history is the story of the English people, and the 
birth or death of no king affects its continuity. Once 
in our schools we studied the record of the decline 
and fall of the Roman Empire. Now we realize that 
nothing that had life in it could decline and fall. The 
decay of empires is but the breaking of the clods 
above the growth of man. Books have been written 
on the seven or eight ' ' decisive battles ' ' in the history 
of the world. Great battles there have been, but the 
stake in any battle is less than it appears. No strug- 
gle of force against force can ever be decisive. Not 
on the field of battle is the march of events deter- 
mined. The growth of man goes on whether battles 
are lost or won. It is written in the nature of man never 
to be satisfied with wrong. A battle may decide 
the fate of a king or a dynasty, but not the fate of 
humanity. The spirit of freedom is in the heart of 

i68 



UNIVERSITY AND COMMON MAN 

man. Kings can never crush it. Priests cannot 
smother it. It is never buried in the dust of defeat. 
The growth of man goes on and on, and the develop- 
ment of individual manhood is all that is vital in 
human history. 

Not long ago, Earl Roseberry, then Premier of 
England, said, ' ' Royalty in England is no longer a 
political but a social function." In other words, the 
king no longer rules the body and the souls of men. 
He is but an adornment to society, a piece of historical 
bric-a-brac, which fills an ornamental niche about 
which old memories cluster, but which has no regard 
to present action. And this indeed is true. The good 
Victoria was not a very queen in flesh and blood as 
Mary was or Elizabeth. Her royalty was a beautiful 
social fiction. Her will dictated the cut of the ladies' 
dresses as they entered her parlors at Balmoral or Wind- 
sor. Nothing more. No longer life and fame hung 
on the queen's word; neither was the queen's will po- 
tent for peace or war. Over not one of her majesty' s 
ships could her majesty use the voice of command. 
All that concerned the history of the Victorian Age 
lay as far from the touch of the good Empress of 
India as it lay from the Queen of Sheba. The Prince 
of Wales no longer stands in his black coat of armor, 
receiving the homage of the conquered hosts. In 
black Prince Albert coat, the soul of propriety, he 
may preside over agricultural fairs, and in questions 
of social precedence his voice is still potent. 

169 



UNIVERSITY AND COMMON MAN 

Even as the kings, the day of the nations is pass- 
ing, Man reaches his hand across the artificial boun- 
daries of states. The great forces of human growth 
are everywhere at work, and the spirit of the times is 
no respecter of nations. That the nations make gross 
expenditures to pile up barriers along their frontiers, 
is but a sign that barriers crumble and are held up by 
force alone. The day of empire passes swiftly. Im- 
perialism like feudalism is soon a thing of the past. 
Whatever its name or apparent form the real govern- 
ment of civilization is democracy. It is public opin- 
ion that rules the common judgment of the common 

man. 

•' God said, ' I am tired of kings; 
I suffer them no more. 
For to my ear each morning brings 
The outrage of the poor. 
Think you I made this ball 
A field of havoc and war 
Where tyrants small 
Should harry the weak and poor ? ' " 

And as the kings failed the sceptre of power fell 
from their hands. The church could not retain it. 
Through the centuries the priests had tried in vain to 
control the destinies of men by holding them in masses. 
But masses can never endure. By the movement of 
the ages they break up into men. And each man 
must seek his own salvation in fear and trembling even 
as he seeks his own food by the sweat of his brow. 
Even as the aristocracy of piety could not hold the 

170 



UNIVERSITY AND COMMON MAN 



sceptre of power that the kings let fall, so could no 
other aristocracy keep it long. The chosen of the 
earth have dominion over themselves alone. They 
cannot permanently rule over you nor me. Not the 
caste of the wise, the learned, the strong of arm 
or the blue of blood can permanently endure. All 
that lasts is the man, the common man, and in his 
hands, in your hands, in my hands today is the sceptre 
of power, the sceptre kings and priests and lords could 
never hold. What shall we do with it ? 

For more than a century now the common man 
has ruled America. How has he used his opportu- 
nities? It is too soon to answer this question. A 
hundred years is a time too short for the test of such 
gigantic experiments. Here in America we have 
made history already — some of it glorious; some of 
it foolish; some of it wicked; much of it made up of 
the old stories told over again. We have learned 
that the social problems of Europe are not kept away 
from us by the quarantine of democracy. We find 
that the dead which the dead past cannot bury are 
thrown up on our shores. We find that weakness, 
misery and crime are still with us, and that wherever 
weakness is there is tyranny also. The essence of 
tyranny lies not in the strength of the strong, but in the 
weakness of the weak. Even in the free air of America 
there are still millions who are not free — millions who 
can never be free under any government or under any 
laws, so long as they remain what they are. 

171 



UNIVERSITY AND COMMON MAN 

The remedy for oppression, then, is to bring in 
men who cannot be oppressed. This is the remedy 
our fathers sought; we shall find no other. The 
problem of life is not to make life easier, but to make 
men stronger, so that no problem shall be beyond 
their solution. It will be a sad day for the Republic 
when life is easy for ignorance, indolence and apathy. 
The social order of the present we cannot change 
much if we would. The real work of each genera- 
tion is to mold the social order of the future. The 
grown-up men and women of today are, in a sense, 
past savmg. The best work of the Republic is to 
save the children. 

The one great duty of a free nation is education — 
education, wise, thorough, universal; the education, 
not of cramming, but of training; the education 
that no republic has ever given, and without which 
all republics must be in whole or in part failures. If 
this generation should leave as its legacy to the next 
the real education, — training in individual power and 
skill, breadth of outlook on the world and on life, — 
the problems of the next century would take care of 
themselves. There can be no industrial problem 
where each man is capable of solving his own individ- 
ual problem for himself. 

In this direction lies, I believe, the key to all indus- 
trial and social problems. Reforms in education are 
the greatest of all reforms. The ideal education must 
meet two demands: it must be personal, fitting a man 



UNIVERSITY AND COMMON MAN 

or woman for success in life; it must be broad, giving 
a man or woman such an outlook on the world that 
this success may be worthy. It should give to each 
man or woman that reserve strength without which no 
life can be successful, because no life can be free. 

All education must be individual — fitted to indi- 
vidual needs. That which is not so is unworthy of 
the name. A misfit education is no education at all. 
Every man that lives has a right to some form of 
higher education. A generous education, as I have 
said more than once, should be the birthright of every 
son and daughter of this Republic. 

To furnish the higher education that humanity 
needs, the college must be as broad as humanity. No 
spark of talent that man may possess should be out- 
side its fostering care. To fit man into schemes of 
education has been the mistake of the past. To fit 
education to man is the work of the future. 

The traditions of higher education in America had 
their origin in social conditions very different from 
ours. In the Golden Age of Greece, each free man 
stood on the backs of nine slaves. The freedom of 
the ten was the birthright of the one. To train the 
tenth man was the function of the early university. 
Only free men can be trained. A part of this training 
of the tenth in the early days was necessarily in the 
arts by whicn the nine were kept in subjection. 

The universities of Paris and Oxford and Cam- 
bridge were founded to educate the lord and the 

173 



UNIVERSITY AND COMMON MAN 

priest. And to these schools and their successors, as 
time went on, fell the duty of training the gentlemen 
and the clergy. Only in our day has it been recog- 
nized that the common man had part or lot in higher 
education. For now he has come into his own, and 
he demands that he, too, may be noble and gentle. 

The old traditions are not sufficient for him. The 
narrow processes by which gentlemen were trained in 
mediaeval Oxford are not adequate to the varied 
demands of the man of the twentieth century. He is 
more than a gentleman. Heir to all the ages he 
must be; and there are ages since, as there were ages 
before, the tasks set in these schools became stereo- 
typed as culture. The need of wise choice has 
become a thousand-fold greater with the extension of 
human knowledge and human power. The need of 
choosing right is steadily growing more and more im- 
perative. If the common man is to be his own high 
priest in these strenuous days, his strength must be as 
great, his consecration as intense as it was with those 
who were his rulers in ruder and less trying times. 
The osmosis of classes is still going on. By its silent 
force it has ' ' pulled down the mighty from their seats, 
and has exalted them of low degree." Again, edu- 
cate our rulers. We find that they need it. They 
have in the aggregate, not yet the brains, nor the 
conscience, nor the force of will that fits them for the 
task the fates have thrown upon them. 

If the wisdom of the one is shared by the ten, it 

174 



UNIVERSITY AND COMMON MAN 

must increase ten-fold in amount. If it does not, the 
Golden Age of modern civilization must pass away. 
Every moment we feel it slipping from our hands. 
Every moment we must strive for a fresh hold. 
"Eternal vigilance," it was said of old, "is the 
price of liberty." And this was what was meant. 
The perpetuation of free institutions rests with free 
men. The masses, the mobs of men, are never free. 
Hence the need of the hour is to break up the 
masses. They should be masses no longer, but indi- 
vidual men and women. The work of higher educa- 
tion is to put an end to the rule of the multitude, to 
turn the multitude into men. 

The university of today must recognize the need 
of the individual student as the reason for its exist- 
ence. If we are to make men and women out of 
boys and girls, it will be as individuals, not as classes. 
The best field of corn is that in which the individual 
stalks are most strong and most fruitful. Class legis- 
lation has always proved pernicious and ineffective, 
whether in a university or in a state. The strongest 
nation is that in which the individual man is most help- 
ful and most independent. The best school is that 
which exists for the individual student. A university 
is not an aggregation of colleges, departments or 
classes. It is built up of young men and women. 
The student is its unit. The basal idea of higher edu- 
cation is, that each student should devote his time and 
strength to what is best for him; that no force of 

175 



UNIVERSITY AND COMMON MAN 

tradition, no rule of restraint, no bait of a degree, 
should swerve any one from his best educational path. 

"The way to educate a man," Professor Anderson 
has said, "is to set him to work; the best way to get 
him to work is to interest him ; the best way to interest 
him is to vitalize his task by relating it to some form 
of reality." 

Individualism in education is no discovery of our 
times. None of us have any patent on it. It was by 
no means invented at Palo Alto; neither was it born at 
Harvard nor in Michigan. The need of it is written 
in the heart of man. It had found recognition where- 
ever the ' ' care and culture ' ' of man had been taken 
seriously. 

A Japanese writer, Uchimura, says of education in 
old Japan: "We were not taught in classes then. 
The grouping of soul-bearing human beings into 
classes, as sheep upon Australian farms, was not 
known in our old schools. Our teachers believed, I 
think, instinctively, that man (^persona) is unclassifi- 
able; that he must be dealt with personally — i. e., 
face to face, and soul to soul. So they schooled us 
one by one — each according to his idiosyncrasies, 
physical, mental and spiritual." Thus it was in old 
Japan. Thus should it be in new America. In such 
manner do the old ideas forever renew their youth, 
when these ideas are based not on tradition or con- 
vention, but in the nature of man. 

The best care and culture of man is not that which 
176 



UNIVERSITY AND COMMON MAN 

restrains his weakness, but that which gives play to 
his strength. We should work for the positive side 
of life. We should build up ideals of effort. To get 
rid of vice and folly is to let strength grow in their 
place. 

The great danger in democracy is the seeming pre- 
dominance of the weak. The strong and the true 
seem never to be in the majority. The politician who 
knows the signs of the times understands the ways of 
majorities. He knows well the weakness of the com- 
mon man. Injustice, violence, fraud and corruption 
are all expressions of it, and on this weakness he plays. 
Hence the emptiness of party platforms, the silliness 
and immorality of partisan appeals. 

The strength of the common man the leaders do 
not know. Ignorant, venal and vacillating, the com- 
mon man is at his worst; but he is also earnest, intelli- 
gent and determined. To know him at his best, is 
the essence of real statesmanship. His power for 
good may be used as well as his power for evil. It 
was this trust of the common man that made the 
statesmanship of Abraham Lincoln. And under such 
a leader the common man ceased to be common. 

Should the common man remain common ? This 
some have thought, and they have fought the public 
school as though it were the advance guard of an- 
archy. 

My own great-grandfather, John Elderkin Waldo, 
said in Tolland, Connecticut, a century ago, "that 

177 



UNIVERSITY AND COMMON MAN 

there would never be good times in New England 
again until each farm laborer was willing to work all 
day for ' a sheep' s head and pluck. ' ' ' That ' ' the 
times of contentment ' ' were gone, he thought ' ' was 
due to the little red schoolhouses scattered over the 
hills teaching the doctrines of sedition and anarchy." 
But the movement of democracy has been just in the 
opposite direction from that which good Gaffer Waldo 
upheld. The laborers of Connecticut are the state of 
Connecticut today. Those at the bottom a century 
ago have risen highest and have demanded the most. 

The movement of history, so far as man is con- 
cerned, according to Sir Henry Maine, has been always 
from status to contract. In ruder, coarser times a 
man's state in life is determined by what his father 
was. In civilization he is what he makes himself. In 
barbarism, feudalism, imperialism, as Napoleon once 
pointed out, woman has no rank at all. She is what 
father, lover, master or fate may choose to make her. 
In civilization she, too, has a soul, and her place, like 
that of man, is that which she may choose or accept. 

The ideal of the state of contract is, that each man 
or woman, each unit of society or government, should 
be free to make the most of himself. "A child is 
better unborn than untaught. ' ' Or, in the words of 
Emerson, ' ' the best political economy is the care and 
culture of men." Hence it is that the very essence 
of republicanism is popular education. There is no 
virtue in the acts of ignorant majorities, unless by dint 

178 



UNIVERSITY AND COMMON MAN 

of repeated action the majority is no longer ignorant. 
The very work of ruling is in itself education. As 
Americans, we believe in government by the people. 
This is not that the people are the best of rulers, but 
because a growth in wisdom is sure to go with the 
increase of responsibility. 

The voice of the people is not the voice of God; 
but if this voice be smothered, it becomes the voice 
of the demon. The red flag of the anarchist is woven 
where the people think in silence. In popular gov- 
ernment, it has been said, ignorance has the same 
right to be represented as wisdom. This may be true, 
but the perpetuity of such government demands that 
this fact of representation should help to transform 
ignorance into wisdom. Majorities are generally 
wrong, but only through experience of their mistakes 
is the way opened to the permanent establishment of 
right. The justification of the experiment of universal 
suffrage is the formation of a training-school in civics, 
which, in the long run, will bring about good gov- 
ernment. 

Our fathers built for the future — a future even yet 
unrealized. America is not, has never been, the best 
governed of civilized nations. The iron-handed dic- 
tatorship of Germany is, in its way, a better govern- 
ment than our people have ever given us. That is, it 
follows a more definite and consistent policy. Its 
affairs of state are conducted with greater economy, 
greater intelligence and higher dignity than ours. It 
179 



UNIVERSITY AND COMMON MAN 

is above the influence of the two arch-enemies of the 
American state — the corruptionist and the spoilsman. 
If this were all, we might welcome a Bismarck as our 
ruler, in place of our succession of weak -armed and 
short-lived presidents. 

But this is not all. It is not true that the govern- 
ment "which is the best administered is the best." 
This is the maxim of tyranny. Good government 
may be a matter even of secondary importance. Our 
government by the people is for the people's growth. 
It is the great training-school in governmental meth- 
ods, and in the progress which it insures lies the certain 
pledge of better government in the future. This 
pledge, I believe, enables us to look with confidence 
on the gravest of political problems, problems that 
other nations have never solved, and that can be 
faced by no statesmanship other than 

" The right divine of man, 
The millions trained to be free." 

And in spite of all reaction and discouragement, every 
true American feels that this trust in the future is no 
idle boast. 

But popular education has higher aims than those 
involved in intelligent citizenship. No country can 
be truly well governed in which any person is pre- 
vented either by interference or by neglect from mak- 
ing the most of himself. "Of all state treasures," 
says Andrew D. White, "the genius and talent of 



UNIVERSITY AND COMMON MAN 

citizens are the most precious. It is a duty of society 
to itself, a duty that it cannot throw off, to see that the 
stock of talent and genius in each generation may have 
a chance for development, that it may be added to the 
world's stock and aid in the world s work." 

But the work of the free public school cannot stop 
with the rudiments of education. Else the common 
man would remain as common as ever. The open 
door of education must be more than a door. It must 
lead somewhere, and to something worth while. 

I am not here to plead the value of higher educa- 
tion. The man who doubts it is beyond the reach of 
argument. The men who have made our country are 
the educated men, not its college graduates, for until 
within the last twenty-five years college men were not 
themselves abreast of our own progress. The coun- 
try was made by men of broad views and high ideals, 
and these views and these ideals came from them to 
the common man. 

I do not plead even for state support of higher 
education. That our people have taken for granted, 
however niggardly has been their provision for it. If 
the state makes no provision for higher education 
there is no other agency on which we can depend to 
supply it. Higher education by the state is the com- 
ing glory of democracy. The state university is the 
culmination of the state public school system. With- 
out the head the system is itself ineffective. Each part 
of the system draws its strength and its inspiration 



UNIVERSITY AND COMMON MAN 

from the part that is higher. Lop off the upper 
branches of the tree, and the sap ceases to rise in its 
trunk. If the state fails to furnish the means of edu- 
cation, higher or lower, these means will never be ade- 
quately supplied. The people must combine to do 
this work, for in the long run no other agency can do 
it. Moreover, any other means of maintenance of the 
university sooner or later forms the entering wedge 
between the school and the people. 

Dr. Angell has lately said that the history of Iowa 
is the history of her state university, the greatness of 
the state has come through the growth of the men the 
state has trained. What is true of Iowa is far more 
true of Dr. Angell' s own state of Michigan. It is 
true of Washington, of Oregon, of California, of all 
the states, each in its degree. 

In 1887 I spoke before the students of the Uni- 
versity of Minnesota, Again, ten years later, I 
stood on the same platform. The change in these 
ten years seemed as the work of magic, A few hun- 
dred students housed in coarse barracks, with few 
teachers and scanty appliances in 1887; in 1897 ^ 
magnificent university, that would no wise stand in 
shame if brought in comparison with Oxford or Cam- 
bridge or the still broader and sounder universities of 
Germany. Beautiful buildings, trained professors, 
adequate appliances — all gathered together by the 
common people, all the work of the state, all part of 
the system of public schools, with upwards of two 



UNIVERSITY AND COMMON MAN 

thousand students actually there in person, the con- 
trolling percentage of the men and the women of 
college age, in the whole great state. In this university- 
today is written the history of Minnesota for the next 
century. It is an inspiring history, a history of free- 
dom, of self-reliance, of wisdom and of self-restraint. 
As I looked down into those bright young eyes I felt that 
I was gazing forward into the future of American de- 
mocracy, that I had looked into the middle of the next 
century and I had found it good. 

But more than one-third of these students were 
girls, and some one at my elbow said, ' ' It looks like 
a girl' s school " ; so in fact it did. Then in thought, 
I looked forward to the day when these six hundred 
girls should, most of them, be centres of Minnesota 
homes, — homes of culture, homes of power, through 
whose noble influences the work of the university should 
be multiplied a hundred-fold. Then I blessed the wis- 
dom of the fathers, I rejoiced in the fact that our state 
universities were schools for women as they are for 
men. Within the control of the state universities are 
the homes of the twentieth century, and from these 
homes of culture, purity and power will come the for- 
tunate students of the fortunate colleges of the years 
to come. 

James Bryce has said that of all institutions in 

America it is of the universities that we have most 

right to be proud. No other institution in America 

holds such promise of the future. The state univer- 

183 



UNIVERSITY AND COMMON MAN 

sity is the glory of our democracy. This I can realize 
now that I stand outside its walls, with no part or lot 
in its successes, even better than in the past when with 
such force as I had, I did battle in its ranks. 

Eighteen years ago it was my fortune to speak to 
the students in the University of Washington. These 
are not the same students before me now, not the same 
professors. Hardly the same university. Only the 
same green fir-forests, the same blue waters of the 
Sound, the same clear winding lakes, the same snow- 
capped Olympics, and Baker and Rainier, the same 
freedom, the same hope. 

In the frontier settlement of Seattle, on a hill in 
the suburbs, stood the little territorial university. A 
single wooden building with one professor, our vet- 
eran friend, Mr. A. J. Anderson, or it may be two pro- 
fessors, and a few dozen ill-trained but eager students. 
That was all — only the germ of a university half 
forgotten among the bustling industries of the frontier. 

It may be that it is only a germ today, but the 
foliage is expanding and there are signs of flowering 
buds. It has begun to gather power, to make history, 
and the history it has really made will appear in the 
coming century when the boys and the girls before me 
shall mold the social life and the political life of the 
great state of the Northwest. 

We are here to mark one great step in the growth 
of the University of Washington, to set up a milestone 
in her pilgrimage. 

184 



UNIVERSITY AND COMMON MAN 

Mistakes have been made in her past history. 
These need not concern us now, save to make us 
hope that each has taught its own lesson. Mistakes 
may be made in the future, but the ultimate result is 
sure. The university by the lake is the most valuable 
treasure your state will ever possess. As the state 
grows, so will the university grow. As the university 
stands among its sister schools, so will the state stand 
among its sister states. You cannot make Washing- 
ton great while you leave her university to starve. 
One great mistake you have made — which I fear you 
can never right again. You have divided between 
Pullman and Seattle the strength that should never be 
divided. There is power in concentration, and you 
have wasted this power. You have weakened the 
force of higher education at the behest of local ambi- 
tion, or it may be sectional jealousy. 

The University of Washington exists for the good 
of its students. Through these it must justify its 
existence. For this reason it should spend its money 
and its strength on that only which makes for educa- 
tion. There is no need to worry about attendance. 
Students will come when their wants are met. They 
will come to a good college and come in numbers, 
though they have to walk a hundred miles to find it. 
It is the teachers who make the university. "Have 
a university in shanties, nay, in tents," said Cardinal 
Newman, " but have great teachers in it. " There is 
no other requisite and there is no substitute. Build- 

185 



UNIVERSITY AND COMMON MAN 

ings, libraries, departments, publications, names and 
numbers do not make a university. It is the men that 
teach. Once Emerson wrote to his daughter, "It 
matters little what your studies are, it all lies in who 
your teacher is." 

The future of the University of Washington lies 
in who its teachers are. To choose its teachers is to 
write its future, and through the future of the univer- 
sity to write the future of the state. I know of no 
career more inspiring than that of the president of the 
university of one of the free, generous, growing com- 
munities we call the United States. In his hand is the 
magic wand of power, and to zealously and jealously 
guard this he must give the strength of his life. 

To your newly chosen president let me say this: 
It is for you to give color and character and direc- 
tion to the work of the University of Washington. 
The successful university, like the successful man, must 
have an individuality of its own. It must stand for 
something. Unless it has a definite character and 
purpose it does not rise above the level of a cheese 
factory. There are American universities in the vege- 
table stage, without will or soul, with limp-handed 
presidents and professors anxious only to retain their 
salaries. Such universities do not justify their ex- 
istence. Good students shun them. Good teachers 
scorn them, and the good they do is half evil because 
they stand in the way of something better. 

It is for you to see that the University of Wash- 
186 



UNIVERSITY AND COMMON MAN 

ington is not of this character. It is for you to make 
it great — not alone in its buildings or endowment or 
the length of its roll of students. These are only 
incidents. A university is great only in the spirit 
that pervades it. What this spirit is depends on the 
men that make its faculty. To choose these men is 
your most sacred duty. This duty is yours and 
yours alone. If others take it from you, they are 
usurpers and it is your duty today and forever to 
resent usurpation. If you are fit for the position you 
hold then you are the fittest man in the state to choose 
the state's professors. No Board of Trustees should 
take this task from your hands; no honest board will 
try to do so, unless, indeed, through lack of confidence 
in you. If you cannot secure and hold the confi- 
dence of honest men, you should not hold your 
place. If you have to deal with men not honest, 
then go down, if fall you must, with colors flying. 
Never consent to a wrong appointment to make your 
own position easy. 

This only have you a right to consider in choosing 
your coworkers. Do the best for the students you 
can with the money you are able to spend. No citi- 
zen in Washington has a claim on the university. 
There is no man who has earned the right to be 
appointed except by his own excellence in scholarship, 
his skill as a teacher and the loftiness of his character. 
Neither personal nor political influence; not the de- 
mands of churches, nor the claims of charity have you 

187 



UNIVERSITY AND COMMON MAN 

any right to consider. No man fit for a professorship 
will ever try to work such claims. Men have said 
that the state universities lie at the mercy of poli- 
ticians. If this be true it is because the doors are 
left in charge of rascals. If politics, using the word 
in the low sense, enter the University of Washington, 
Dr. Graves, let it be over your dead body. There 
are martyrs to the cause of education as well as to 
other causes. The blood of the martyrs is the seed 
of the church. The martyrdom of President Tappan 
made the University of Michigan. The success of 
Michigan, the first state university worthy the name, 
gave a mighty inspiration to the whole system of pub- 
lic schools that will some day make America. 

Every man who has a right to enter these halls as 
professor should be a man v/ho knows. He should be 
a master of the work in hand, and above all he should 
be a growing man. A growing man invites growth; 
■even mold will not grow on a fossil. The teacher 
:should have ' ' power enough to be productive. ' ' No 
second-hand man was ever a great teacher. No 
second-hand man, whether plodder or charlatan, 
should have place within these consecrated halls. 

To secure worthy men your state must pay worthy 
salaries, salaries on which a young man can live and 
grow. There is no profession that demands so much, 
none that, on the average, is so poorly paid. This 
is because presidents and boards lack discrimina- 
tion. They pay the dullard and the charlatan the same 

i88 



UNIVERSITY AND COMMON MAN 

salary they pay the scholar. The scholar will leave 
sooner or later for some place or work where he is 
better appreciated. The salaries you pay here can 
attract only young men or weak men. The young 
men of power will make reputations and go some- 
where else. Those who will be permanently satisfied 
with fifteen hundred to two thousand a year are only 
the dregs of the profession. A growing man must 
travel, must have books, must be able to care for his 
family. Without these he cannot grow. His ex- 
penses must be large, his salary must be larger. 

Doubtless the average professor isn't worth two 
thousand a year. Doubtless you could fill every 
chair here on five hundred. But that is not the 
point. The fact is, the average college professor 
is worth very little indeed. It is not average men but 
real men that make a university. Some real men you 
have and you know who they are. There is no 
excuse for you to employ any others. Average men 
and average teachers you can buy tied in bunches at 
any price you choose to ofier; for real men you must 
look far and wide, for they are in constant demand. 

With thoroughness of training must go sympathy 
and skill. The teacher must come near to the heart 
of his students. The greatest teacher is the one who 
never forgets that he was once a boy and who knows 
the aspirations, the limitations and the ambitions of 
the boys of today. 

And with all this, more vital than all is the demand 

189 



UNIVERSITY AND COMMON MAN 

for character. Without character, — devoted, rugged, 
strength of soul, — no man has a right to teach. 
Along this line every year the profession is winnowed 
of its chaff. Vacillating men, cynical men, perverse 
men, tricky men, visionary men, smart men, hypo- 
critical men, beastly men, men who are slaves of 
habit, weakness or vice are cast out one by one from 
the profession into which they have drifted. Let such 
as these find no asylum with you. 

The highest function of the university is the forma- 
tion of character, the training of men and women, in 
purity and strength, in sweetness and light. The 
great teacher never fails to leave a great mark on 
e\'ery young man and young woman with whom he 
comes in contact. 

And this mark of greatness in its last analysis is 
always a moral one. There is no real excellence in 
all this world that can be separated from right living. 
'The earth," says Emerson, "is upheld by the 
veracity of good men. They make the world whole- 
some. ' ' 



190 



X. 



THE WOMAN AND THE 
UNIVERSITY. 

THE subject of the higher training of young 
women may resolve itself into three ques- 
tions: 

I. Shall a girl receive a college edu- 
cation ? 

2. Shall she receive the same kind of college edu 
cation as a boy f 

J. Shall she be ediicated in the same college ? 

As to the first question: It must depend on the 
character of the girl. Precisely so with the boy. 
What we should do with either depends on his or her 
possibilities. No parent should let either boy or girl 
enter life with any less preparation than the best he 
can give. It is true that many college graduates, 
boys and girls alike, do not amount to much after 
the schools have done all they can. It is true, also, 
that higher education is not a question alone of pre- 
paring great men for great things. It must prepare 
even little men for greater things than they would 
otherwise have found possible. And so it is with the 
education of women. The needs of the time are im- 

191 



THE WOMAN AND THE UNIVERSITY 

perative. The highest product of social evolution is 
the growth of the civilized home, the home that only 
a wise, cultivated and high-minded woman can make. 
To furnish such women is one of the worthiest func- 
tions of higher education. No young women capable 
of becoming such should be condemned to anything 
lower. Even with those who are in appearance too 
dull or too vacillating to reach any high ideal of wis- 
dom, this may be said — it does no harm to try. A 
few hundred dollars is not much to spend on an ex- 
periment of such moment. Four of the best years 
of one's life spent in the company of noble thoughts 
and high ideals cannot fail to leave their impress. To 
be wise, and at the same time womanly, is to wield a 
tremendous influence, which may be felt for good in 
the lives of generations to come. It is not forms of 
government by which men are made and unmade. It 
is the character and influence of their mothers and 
their wives. The higher education of women means 
more for the future than all conceivable legislatix'e 
reforms. And its influence does not stop with the 
home. It means higher standards of manhood, greater 
thoroughness of training, and the coming of better 
men. Therefore let us educate our girls as well as 
our boys. A generous education should be the birth- 
right of every daughter of the Republic as well as of 
every son. 

It is hardly necessary among intelligent men and 
women to argue that a good woman is a better one for 

19Z 



THE WOMAN AND THE UNIVERSITY 

having received a college education. Anything short 
of this is inadequate for the demands of modern life 
and modern culture. The college training should give 
some basis for critical judgment among the various 
lines of thought and effort which force themselves 
upon our attention. Untrained cleverness is said to 
be the most striking characteristic of the American 
woman. Trained cleverness, a very much more 
charming thing, is characteristic of the American 
college woman. And when cleverness stands in the 
right perspective, when it is so strengthened and 
organized that it becomes wisdom, then it is the most 
valuable dowry a bride can bring to her home. 

Even if the four K's, " Kirche, Kinder, Kuchen 
and Kleider," are to occupy woman's life, as Em- 
peror William would have us believe, the college edu- 
cation is not too serious a preparation for the profes- 
sion of directing them. A wise son is one who has 
had a wise mother, and to give alertness, intelligence 
and wisdom is the chief function of a college educa- 
tion. 

2. Shall we give our Girls the Same Education 
as our Boys ? 

Yes, and no. If we mean by the same, an equal 
degree of breadth and thoroughness, an equal fitness 
for high thinking and wise acting, yes, let it be the 
same. If we mean this: Shall we reach this end by 
exactly the same course of studies? then the answer 
must be, No. For the same course of study will not 

193 



THE WOMAN AND THE UNIVERSITY 

yield the same results with diiferent persons. The 
ordinary "college course" which has been handed 
down from generation to generation is purely conven- 
tional. It is a result of a series of compromises in 
trying to fit the traditional education of clergymen 
and gentlemen to the needs of a different social era. 
The old college course met the needs of nobody, and 
therefore was adapted to all alike. The great educa- 
tional awakening of the last twenty years in America 
has lain in breaking the bonds of this old system. 
The essence of the new education is constructive indi- 
vidualism. Its purpose is to give to each young man 
that training which will make a man of hivi. Not the 
training which a century or two ago helped to civilize 
the mass of boys of that time, but that which will 
civilize this particular boy. The main reason why the 
college students of today are twenty times as many as 
twenty years ago is that the college training now given 
is valuable to twenty times as many men as could be 
reached or helped by the narrow courses of twenty 
years ago. 

In the university of today the largest liberty of 
choice in study is given to the student. The profess- 
or advises, the student chooses, and the flexibility of 
the courses makes it possible for every form of talent 
to receive proper culture. Because the college of 
today helps ten times as many men as that of yester- 
day could hope to reach, it is ten times as valuable. 
This difference lies in the development of special lines 

194 



THE WOMAN AND THE UNIVERSITY 

of work and in the growth of the elective system. 
The power of choice carries the duty of choosing 
rightly. The ability to choose has made a man out of 
the college boy, and has transferred college work from 
an alternation of tasks and play to its proper relation 
to the business of life. Meanwhile the old ideals have 
not risen in value. If our colleges were to go back 
to the cut-straw of medisevalism, to their work of 
twenty years ago, their professors would speak to 
empty benches. In those colleges which still cling to 
these traditions the benches are empty today, or filled 
with idlers. 

I do not mean to condemn the study of the ancient 
classics and mathematics which made almost the whole 
of the older college course. These studies must 
always have their place, but no longer an exclusive 
place. The study of the language and literature of 
Greece still ranks with the noblest efforts of the human 
intelligence. For those who can master it, Greek 
gives a help not to be obtained in any other way. As 
Thoreau once observed, those who would speak of 
forgetting the Greek are those who never knew it. 
But without mastery there is no gain of strength. To 
compel all men and boys of whatever character or abil- 
ity to study Greek is in itself a degradation of Greek, 
as it is a hardship to those forced to spend their 
strength where it is not effective. There are other 
forms of culture better fitted to other types of man, and 
the essential feature lies in the strength of mastery. 

19s 



THE WOMAN AND THE UNIVERSITY 

The best education for a young woman is surely 
not that which has proved unfit for the young man. 
She is an individual as well as he, and her work gains 
as much as his by relating it to her life. But an insti- 
tution which meets the varied needs of varied men can 
also meet the varied needs of varied women. The 
intellectual needs of the two classes are not very differ- 
ent in may important respects. In so far as these are 
different the elective system gives full play for the ex- 
pression of such differences. It is true that most men 
in college look forward to professional training and 
that very few women do so. But the college training 
is not in itself a part of any profession, and it is broad 
enough in its range of choice to point to men and 
women alike the way to any profession which may be 
chosen. Those who have to do with the higher edu- 
cation of women know that the severest demands can 
be met by them as well as by men. There is no de- 
mand for easy or "goody-goody" courses of study 
for women except as this demand has been encouraged 
by men. In this matter the supply has always pre- 
ceded the demand. 

There are, of course, certain average differences be- 
tween men and women as students. Women have often 
greater sympathy or greater readiness of memory or 
apprehension, greater fondness for technique. In the 
languages and literature, often in mathematics and 
history, they are found to excel. They lack, on the 
whole, originality. They are not attracted by un- 

196 



THE WOMAN AND THE UNIVERSITY 

solved problems, and in the inductive or "inexact" 
sciences they seldom take the lead. The ' ' motor ' ' 
side of their minds and natures is not strongly de- 
veloped. They do not work for results as much as 
for the pleasure of study. In the traditional courses 
of study — traditional for men — they are often very 
successful. Not that these courses have a fitness for 
women, but that women are more docile and less criti- 
cal as to the purposes of education. And to all these 
statements there are many exceptions. In this, how- 
ever, those who have taught both men and women 
must agree; the training of women is just as serious 
and just as important as the training of men, and no 
training is adequate for either which falls short of the 
best. 

J. Shall VVotne7i be taught i7i the Same Classes 
as Meyif 

This is partly a matter of taste or personal prefer- 
ence. It does no harm whatever to either men or 
women to meet those of the other sex in the same 
classrooms. But if they prefer not to do so, let them 
do otherwise. No harm is done in either case, nor has 
the matter more than secondary importance. Much 
has been said for and against the union in one institu- 
tion of technical schools and schools of liberal arts. 
The technical quality is emphasized by its separation 
from general culture. But I believe that better men 
are made when the two are brought more closely 
together. The culture studies and their students gain 

197 



THE WOMAN AND THE UNIVERSITY 

from the feeling of reality and utility cultivated by 
technical work. The technical students gain from 
association with men and influences of which the 
aggregate tendency is toward greater breadth of sym- 
pathy and a higher point of view. 

A woman's college is more or less distinctly a 
technical school. In most cases, its purpose is dis- 
tinctly stated to be such. It is a school of training 
for the profession of womanhood. It encourages 
womanliness of thought as more or less different from 
the plain thinking which is called manly. The bright- 
est work in woman's colleges is often accompanied by 
a nervous strain, as though its doer were fearful of 
falling short of some outside standard. The best work 
of men is natural, is unconscious, the normal result of 
the contact of the mind with the problem in question. 

In this direction, I think, lies the strongest argu- 
ment for co-education. This argument is especially 
cogent in institutions in which the individuality of the 
student is recognized and respected. In such schools 
each man, by his relation to action and realities, be- 
comes a teacher of women in these regards, as, in 
other ways, each cultivated woman is a teacher of men. 

In woman's education, as planned for women 
alone, the tendency is toward the study of beauty and 
order. Literature and language take precedence over 
science. Expression is valued more highly than ac- 
tion. In carrying this to an extreme the necessary 
relation of thought to action becomes obscured. The 

198 



THE WOMAN AND THE UNIVERSITY 

scholarship developed is not effective, because it is not 
related to success. The educated woman is likely to 
master technique, rather than art; method, rather than 
substance. She may know a good deal, but she can 
do nothing. Often her views of life must undergo 
painful changes before she can find her place in the 
world. 

In schools for men alone, the reverse condition 
often obtains. The sense of reality obscures the ele- 
ments of beauty and fitness. It is of great advantage 
to both men and women to meet on a plane of equal- 
ity in education. Women are brought into contact 
with men who can do things — men in whom the sense 
of reality is strong, arid who have definite views of 
life. This influence affects them for good. It turns 
them away from sentimentalism. It gives tone to 
their religious thoughts and impulses. Above all, it 
tends to encourage action as governed by ideals, as 
opposed to that resting on caprice. It gives them bet- 
ter standards of what is possible and impossible when 
the responsibility for action is thrown upon them. 

In like manner, the association with wise, sane and 
healthy women has its value for young men. This 
value has never been fully realized, even by the 
strongest advocates of co-education. It raises their 
ideal of womanhood, and the highest manhood must 
be associated with such an ideal. This fact shows 
itself in many ways; but to point out its existence 
must suffice for the present paper. 

199 



THE WOMAN AND THE UNIVERSITY 

At the present time the demand for the higher 
education of women is met in three different ways: 

1. In separate colleges for women, with courses of 
study more or less parallel with those given in col- 
leges for men. In some of these the teachers are 
all women, in some mostly men, and in others a more 
or less equal division obtains. In nearly all these 
institutions, those old traditions of education and dis- 
cipline are more prevalent than in colleges for men, 
and nearly all retain some trace of religious or denom- 
inational control. In all, the Zeitgeist is producing 
more or less commotion, and the changes in their evo- 
lution are running parallel with those in colleges for 
men. 

2. In annexes for women to colleges for men. In 
these, part of the instruction to the men is repeated for 
the women, though in different classes or rooms, and 
there is more or less opportunity to use the same libra- 
ries and museums. In some other institutions, the 
relations are closer, the privileges of study being sim- 
ilar, the difference being mainly in the rules of con- 
duct by which the young women are hedged in, the 
young men making their own. 

It seems to me that the annex system cannot be a 
permanent one. The annex student does not get the 
best of the institution, and the best is none too good 
for her. Sooner or later she will demand it, or go 
where the best is to be had. The best students will 
cease to go to the annex. The institution must then 



THE WOMAN AND THE UNIVERSITY 

admit women on equal terms, or not admit them at 
all. There is certainly no educational reason why a 
woman should prefer the annex of one institution 
when another equally good throws its doors wide 
open to her. 

3. The third system is that of co-education. In 
this system young men and young women are admit- 
ted to the same classes, subjected to the same require- 
ments, and governed by the same rules. This system 
is now fully established in the state institutions of the 
North and the West, and in most other colleges in the 
same region. Its effectiveness has long since passed 
beyond question among those familiar w^ith its opera- 
tion. Other things being equal, the young men are 
more earnest, better in manners and morals, and in all 
ways more civilized than under monastic conditions. 
The women do more work in a more natural way, 
with better perspective and with saner incentives than 
when isolated from the influence of the society of men. 
There is less of silliness and folly where a man is 
not a novelty. In co-educational institutions of high 
standards, frivolous conduct or scandals of any form 
are rarely known. The responsibility for decorum is 
thrown from the school to the woman, and the woman 
rises to the responsibility. Many professors have en- 
tered Western colleges with strong prejudices against 
co-education. These prejudices have not often endured 
the test of experience with men who have made an 
honest effort to form just opinions. 



THE WOMAN AND THE UNIVERSITY 

It is not true that the character of the college 
work has been in any way lowered by co-education. 
The reverse is decidedly the case. It is true that 
untimely zeal of one sort or another has filled the 
West with a host of so-called colleges. It is true that 
most of these are weak and doing poor work in poor 
ways. It is true that most of these are co-educational. 
It is also true that the great majority of their students 
are not of college grade at all. In such schools low 
standards rule, both as to scholarship and as to man- 
ners. The student fresh from the country, with no 
preparatory training, will bring the manners of his 
home. These are not always good manners, as man- 
ners are j udged. But none of these defects is derived 
from co-education; nor are any of these conditions 
made worse by it. 

Very lately it is urged against co-education that 
its social demands cause too much strain both on 
young men and young women. College men and 
college women, being mutually attractive, there are 
developed too many receptions, dances and other 
functions in which they enjoy each other's company. 
But this is a matter easily regulated. Furthermore, 
at the most the average young woman in college 
spends in social matters less than one-tenth the time 
she would spend at home. With the young man the 
whole matter represents the difference between high- 
class and low-class associates and associations. When 
college men stand in normal relation with college 



THE WOMAN AND THE UNIVERSITY 

women, meeting them in society as well as in the 
classroom, there is distinctly less of drunkenness, 
rowdyism and vice than obtains under other condi- 
tions. And no harm comes to the young woman 
through the good influence she exerts. To meet 
freely the best young men she will ever know, the 
wisest, cleanest and strongest, can surely do no harm 
to a young woman. Nor will the association with 
the brightest and sanest young women of the land 
work any harm to the young men. This we must 
always recognize. The best young men and the best 
young women, all things considered, are in our col- 
leges. And this has been and will always be the case. 

It is true that co-education is often attempted 
under very adverse conditions. Conditions are ad- 
verse when the little girls of preparatory schools and 
schools of music are mingled with the college students 
and given the same freedom. This is wrong, what- 
ever the kind of discipline offered, lax or strict; the 
two classes need a different sort of treatment. 

When young women have no residence devoted 
to their use, and are forced to rent parlors and garrets 
in private houses of an unsympathetic village, evil 
results sometimes arise. Not very often, to be sure, 
but still once in a while. These are not to be charged 
to co-education, but to the unfit conditions that make 
the pursuit of personal culture difficult or impos- 
sible. Women are more readily affected by sur- 
roundings than men are, and squalid, ill-regulated, 
203 



THE WOMAN AND THE UNIVERSITY 

Bohemian conditions should not be part of their higher 
education. 

Another condition very common and very unde- 
sirable is that in which young women live at home 
and traverse a city twice each day on railway or street 
cars to meet their recitations in some college. The 
greatest instrument of culture in a college is the ' * col- 
lege atmosphere," the personal influence exerted by 
its professors and students. The college atmosphere 
develops feebly in the rush of a great city. The 
" spur-studenten " or railway-track students, as the 
Germans call them, the students who live far from the 
university, get very little of this atmosphere. The 
young woman who attends the university under these 
conditions contributes nothing to the university atmos- 
phere, and therefore receives very little from it. She 
may attend her recitations and pass her examinations, 
but she is in all essential respects ' ' in absentia, ' ' and 
so far as the best influences of the university are con- 
cerned, she is neither "co-educated" nor "edu- 
cated. ' ' The ' ' spur-student ' ' system is bad enough 
for young men, virtually wasting half their time. 
With young women the condition of continuous rail- 
roading, attempted study on the trains, the necessary 
frowsiness of railway travel and the laxness of man- 
ners it cultivates, are all elements very undesirable in 
higher education. If young women enter the col- 
leges, they should demand that suitable place be made 
for them. Failing to find this, they should look for it 

Z04 



THE WOMAN AND THE UNIVERSITY 

somewhere else. Associations which develop vul- 
garity cannot be used for the promotion of culture 
either for men or for women. That the influence of 
cultured women on the whole is opposed to vulgarity 
is a powerful argument for education, and is the secret 
basis of much of the agitation against it. 

With all this it is necessary for us to recognize 
actual facts. There is no question that a reaction has 
set in against co-education. The number of those 
who proclaim their unquestioning faith is relatively 
fewer than would have been the case ten years ago. 
This change in sentiment is not universal. It will be 
nowhere revolutionary. Young women will not be 
excluded from any institution where they are now 
welcomed, nor will the almost universal rule of co- 
education in state institutions be in any way reversed. 
The reaction shows itself in a little less civility of 
boys toward their sisters and the sisters of other 
boys; in a little more hedging on the part of the pro- 
fessors; in a little less pointing with pride on the part 
of college executive officials. There is nothing tan- 
gible in all this. Its existence may be denied or 
referred to ignorance or prejudice. 

But such as it is, we may for a moment inquire 
into its causes. First as to those least worthy. Here 
we may place the dislike of the idle boy to have his 
failures witnessed by women who can do better. I 
have heard of such feelings, but I have no evidence 
that they play much actual part in the question at 
205 



THE WOMAN AND THE UNIVERSITY 

issue. Inferior women do better work than inferior 
men because they are more docile and have much less 
to distract their minds. But there exists a strong 
feeling among rowdyish young men that the prefer- 
ence of women interferes with rowdyish practices. 
This interference is resented by them, and this resent- 
ment shows itself in the use of the offensive term 
"co-ed" and of more offensive words in vogue in 
more rowdyish places. I have not often heard the 
term "co-ed" used by gentlemen, at least without 
quotation marks. Where it is prevalent, it is a sign 
that true co-education — that is, education in terms of 
generous and welcome equality — does not exist. I 
have rarely found opposition to co-education on the 
part of really serious students. The majority are 
strongly in favor of it, but the minority in this as in 
many other cases make the most noise. The rise 
of a student movement against co-education almost 
always accompanies a general recrudescence of aca- 
demic vulgarity. 

A little more worthy of respect as well as a little 
more potent is the influence of the athletic spirit. In 
athletic matters, the young women give very little 
assistance. They cannot play on the teams, they can- 
not yell, and they are rarely generous with their 
money in helping those who can. A college of a 
thousand students, half women, counts for no more 
athletically than one of five hundred, all men. It is 
vainly imagined that colleges are ranked by their ath- 

206 



THE WOMAN AND THE UNIVERSITY 

letic prowess, and that every woman admitted keeps 
out a man, and this man a potential punter or sprinter. 
There is not much truth in all of this, and if there 
were, it is of no consequence. College athletics is in 
its essence by-play, most worthy and valuable for 
many reasons, but nevertheless only an adjunct to the 
real work of the college, which is education. If a 
phase of education otherwise desirable interferes with 
athletics, so much the worse for athletics. 

Of like grade is the feeling that men count for 
more than women, because they are more likely to be 
heard from in after-life. Therefore, their education is 
of more importance, and the presence of women im- 
pedes it. 

A certain adverse influence comes from the fact 
that the oldest and wealthiest of our institutions are 
for men alone or for women alone. These send out a 
body of alumni who know nothing of co-education, 
and who judge it with the positiveness of ignorance. 
Most men filled with the time-honored traditions of 
Harvard and Yale, of which the most permeating is 
that of Harvard's and Yale's infallibility, are against 
co-education on general principles. Similar influences 
in favor of the separate education of women go out 
from the sister institutions of the East. The methods 
of the experimenting, irreverent, idol-breaking West 
find no favor in their eyes. 

The only serious new argument against co-educa- 
tion is that derived from the fear of the adoption by 
207 



THE WOMAN AND THE UNIVERSITY 

universities of woman's standards of art and science 
rather than those of man, the fear that amateurism 
would take the place of specialization in our higher 
education. Women take up higher education because 
they enjoy it; men because their careers depend upon 
it. Only men, broadly speaking, are capable of ob- 
jective studies. Only men can learn to face fact with- 
out flinching, unswayed by feeling or preference. The 
reality with woman is the way in which the fact affects 
her. Original investigation, creative art, the "reso- 
lute facing of the world as it is" — all belong to man's 
world, not at all to that of the average woman. That 
women in college do as good work as the men is be- 
yond question. In the university they do not, for this 
difference exists, the rare exceptions only proving the 
rule, that women excel in technique, men in actual 
achievement. If instruction through investigation is 
the real work of the real university, then in the real 
university the work of the most gifted women may be 
only by-play. 

It has been feared that the admission of women 
to the university would vitiate the masculinity of its 
standards, that neatness of technique would replace 
boldness of conception, and delicacy of taste replace 
soundness of results. 

It is claimed that the preponderance of high- 
school-educated women in ordinary society is showing 
some such effects in matters of current opinion. For 
example, it is claimed that the university extension 

208 



THE WOMAN AND THE UNIVERSITY 

course is no longer of university nature. It is a lyceum 
course designed to please women who enjoy a little 
poetry, play and music, who read the novels of the 
day, dabble in theosophy, Christian science, or physic 
psychology, who cultivate their astral bodies and think 
there is something in palmistry, and are edified by a 
candy-coated ethics of self-realization. There is noth- 
ing ruggedly true, nothing masculine left in it. Cur- 
rent literature and history are affected by the same 
influences. Women pay clever actors to teach them — 
not Shakespeare or Goethe, but how one ought to 
feel on reading King Lear or Faust or Saul. If the 
womei* of society do not read a book it will scarcely 
pay to publish it. Science is popularized in the same 
fashion by ceasing to be science and becoming mere 
sentiment or pleasing information. This is shown by 
the number of books on how to study a bird, a flower, 
a tree, or a star, through an opera-glass, and without 
knowing anything about it. Such studies may be 
good for the feelings or even for the moral nature, 
but they have no elements of that "fanaticism for 
veracity," which is the highest attribute of the edu- 
cated man. 

These results of the education of many women 
and a few men, by which the half-educated woman 
becomes a controlling social factor, have been lately 
set in strong light by Dr. Miinsterberg. But they are 
used by him, not as an argument against co-education, 
but for the purpose of urging the better education of 
Z09 



THE WOMAN AND THE UNIVERSITY 

more men. They form likewise an argument for the 
better education of more women. The remedy for 
feminine dilettantism is found in more severe training. 
Current literature as shown in profitable editions re- 
flects the taste of the leisure class. The women with 
leisure who read and discuss vapid books are not rep- 
resentative of woman's higher education. Most of 
them have never been educated at all. In any event 
this gives no argument against co-education. It is 
thorough training, not separate training, which is 
indicated as the need of the times. Where this train- 
ing is taken is a secondary matter, though I believe, 
with the fulness of certainty that better results can be 
obtained, mental, moral and physical in co-education, 
than in any monastic form of instruction. 

A final question: Does not co-education lead to 
marriage? Most certainly it does; and this fact can- 
not be and need not be denied. The wonder is rather 
that there are not more of such marriages. It is a 
constant surprise that so many college men turn from 
their college associates and marry some earlier or 
later acquaintance of inferior ability, inferior training 
and often inferior personal charm. The marriages 
which result from college association are not often 
premature — college men and college women marry 
later than other men and women — and it is certainly 
true that no better marriages can be made than those 
founded on common interests and intellectual friend- 
ships. 



THE WOMAN AND THE UNIVERSITY 

A college man who has known college women, as 
a rule, is not drawn to those of lower ideals and in- 
ferior training. His choice is likely to be led toward 
the best he has known. A college woman is not led 
by mere propinquity to accept the attentions of inferior 
men. 

Where college men have chosen friends in all cases 
both men and women are thoroughly satisfied with the 
outcome of co-education. It is part of the legitimate 
function of higher education to prepare women, as 
well as men, for happy and successful lives. 

An Eastern professor, lately visiting a Western 
state university, asked one of the seniors what he 
thought of the question of co-education. 

"I beg your pardon," said the student, "what 
question do you mean?" 

"Why, co-education," said the professor, "the 
education of women in colleges for men. ' ' 

"Oh," said the student, "co-education is not a 
question here." 

And he was right. Co-education is never a ques- 
tion where it has been fairlv tried. 



XL 

THE UNIVERSITY OF THE 
UNITED STATES. 

THE most important event in the history of 
modern Germany has been the foundation 
of the University of Berlin. The unifica- 
tion of the German empire was a matter 
of tremendous significance; the success of the Ger- 
man armies has widened the sphere of Teutonic in- 
fluence; the recently adopted uniform code of laws 
marks the progress of national development; but 
more important as an epoch-making event has been 
the building of a great center of human wisdom in 
Germany's chief capital. The influence of the Uni- 
versity of Berlin not only shows itself in Germany's 
preeminence in scientific investigation and the wide 
diflusion of liberal culture, but is felt in every branch 
of industrial eflbrt. There is no trade or handiwork 
in Germany that has not been made more effective by 
the practical application of investigations made in the 
great university. There is no line of effort in which 
men have not become wiser through the influence of 
the noble minds brought together to form this institu- 
tion. 



UNIVERSITY OF THE UNITED STATES 

Nor is the influence of this university and its noble 
sister institutions confined solely or even mainly within 
the boundaries of Germany, The great revival of 
learning in the United States, which has shown itself 
in the growth of universities, in the rise of the spirit 
of investigation, and in the realization of the value 
of truth, can be traced in large degree to Germanic 
influences. These influences have not come to us 
through German immigration, or the presence of 
German scholars among us, but through the experi- 
ence of American scholars in Germany. If it be true, 
as Mr. James Bryce says, that ' ' of all institutions in 
America, ' ' the universities ' ' have the best promise for 
the future, ' ' we have Germany to thank for this. It 
is, however, no abstract Germany that we may thank, 
but a concrete fact. It is the existence in Germany 
of universities, strong, effective and free; and most 
notable among these is the youngest of their number, 
the University of Berlin. 

This century has seen some epoch-making events 
in the history of our Republic. The war of the Union, 
the abolition of slavery, — one and the same in es- 
sence, — mark the same movement of the Republic 
from mediaevalism to civilization. But the great deed 
of the century still remains undone. Ever since the 
time of Washington, our law-givers have contemplated 
building a university at the nation's capital. They 
have planned a university that shall be national and 
American, as the universities of Berlin and Leipzig 

213 



UNIVERSITY OF THE UNITED STATES 

are national and German; a university that shall be 
the culmination of our public-school system, and that 
by its vivifying influence shall quicken the pulse of 
every part of that system. For more than a century, 
wise men have kept this project in mind. For more 
than a century, wise men have seen the pressing need 
of its accomplishment. For more than a century, 
however, the exigencies of politics or the indifference 
of political managers have caused postponement of its 
final consideration. 

Meanwhile, about the national capital, by the very 
necessities of the case, the basal material of a great 
university has been already gathered. The National 
Museum and the Army Medical Museum far exceed 
all other similar collections in America in the amount 
and value of the material gathered for investigation. 
The Library of Congress is our greatest public library ; 
and, in the nature of things, it will always remain so. 
The Geological Survey, the Coast and Geodetic Sur- 
vey, and the biological divisions of the Department 
of Agriculture are constantly engaged in investiga- 
tions of the highest order, conducted by men q£ uni- 
versity training, and possible to no other men. The 
United States Fish Commission is the source of a vast 
part of our knowledge of the sea and of sea life. 
Besides these there are many other bureaus and divi- 
sions in which scientific inquiry constitutes the daily 
routine. The work of these departments should be 
made useful, not only in its conclusions, but in its 

Z14 



UNIVERSITY OF THE UNITED STATES 



methods. A university consists of investigators teach- 
ing. All that the national capital needs to make a 
great university of it, is that a body of real scholars 
should be maintained to train other men in the work 
now so worthily carried on. To do this would be to 
bring to America, in large degree, all that American 
scholars now seek in the University of Berlin. Stu- 
dents will come wherever opportunities for investiga- 
tion are given. No standards of work can be made 
too high; for the severest standards attract rather 
than repel men who are worth educating. 

It should not be necessary to bring arguments to 
show the need of a national university in the United 
States. A university, we may remember, is not a 
school for boys and girls, where the elements of a 
liberal education are taught to those who have yet to 
enter upon the serious work of life. A university is 
not a school maintained for the glory or the extension 
of any denominational body. In its very definition a 
university must be above and beyond all sectarianism. 
Truth is as broad as the universe; and no one can 
search for it between any artificial boundaries. As 
well ask for Presbyterian sunshine or a Baptist June as 
to speak of a denominational university. 

It is said that in America we have already some 
four hundred colleges and universities, and that, there- 
fore, we do not need any more. Quite true; we need 
no more like these. The splendid achievement and 
noble promise of our universities, to which Mr. Bryce 
215 



UNIVERSITY OF THE UNITED STATES 

calls attention, is not due to their number. Many of 
them do not show this promise. If such were to close 
their doors tomorrow, education would be the gainer 
by it. Many of the four hundred, as we well know, 
are not universities in fact or in spirit. Most of the 
work done in the best of them is that of the German 
gymnasium or preparatory school. The worst of 
them would in Germany be closed by the police. But 
in a certain number of the strongest and freest the 
genuine university spirit is found in the highest de- 
gree. For more of these good ones there is a crying 
demand. Their very promise is a reason why we 
should do everything possible to make them better. 
A school can rise to be a university only when its 
teachers are university men; when they are men 
trained to face directly and effectively the problems 
of nature and of life. To give such training is the 
work of the university. In an educational system 
each grade looks to the one next higher for help and 
inspiration. The place at the head of our system is 
now held by the universities of a foreign land. 

It is not the needs of the District of Columbia 
which are to be met by a university of the United 
States. The local needs are well supplied already. It 
is the need of the nation, — and not of the nation 
alone, but of the world. A great university in Amer- 
ica would be a school for the study of civic freedom. 
A great university at the capital of the Republic would 
attract the free-minded of all the earth. It would draw 

216 



UNIVERSITY OF THE UNITED STATES 

men of all lands to the study of democracy. It would 
tend to make the workings of democracy worthy of re- 
spectful study. The New World has its lessons as well 
as the Old; and its material for teaching these lessons 
should be made equally adequate. Mold and ruin are 
not necessary to a university; nor are traditions and 
precedents essential to its effectiveness. The greatest 
of Europe's universities is one of her very youngest. 
Much of the greatness of the University of Berlin is 
due to her escape from the dead hands of the past. 
It is in this release that the great promise of the 
American university lies. Oxford and Cambridge 
are still choked by the dust of their own traditions. 
Because this is so we may doubt whether England has 
today any universities at all, but merely imgenious and 
venerable substitutes. 

The national university should not be an institu- 
tion of general education, with its rules and regula- 
tions, college classes, good-fellowship, and football 
team. It should be the place for the training of inves- 
tigators and of men of action. It should admit no 
student who is under age or who has not a definite 
purpose to accomplish. It has no time or strength to 
spend in laying the foundations for education. Its 
function lies not in the conduct of examinations, or 
the granting of academic degrees. It is not essential 
that it should give professional training of any kind, 
though that would be desirable. It should have the 
same relation to Harvard and Columbia and Johns 
217 



UNIVERSITY OF THE UNITED STATES 

Hopkins that Berlin University now holds. It should 
fill, with noble adequacy, the place which the graduate 
departments of our real universities partially occupy. 
In doing so it would furnish a stimulus which would 
strengthen all similar work throughout the land. 

Graduate work has yet to be taken seriously by 
American universities. Their teachers have carried 
on original research, if at all, in hours stolen from 
their daily tasks of plodding and prodding. The 
graduate student has been allowed to shift for himself; 
and he has been encouraged to select a university not 
for the training it offers, but because of some bonus 
in the form of scholarships. The ' ' free lunch ' ' in- 
ducement to investigation will never build up a univer- 
sity. Fellowships can never take the place of men or 
books or apparatus in developing the university spirit. 
Great libraries and adequate facilities for work are 
costly; and no American institution has yet gathered 
together such essentials for university work as already 
exist at Washington. 

If a national university is a national need, it is the 
duty of the people to meet and satisfy it. No other 
power can do it. As well ask wealthy manufacturers 
or wealthy churches to endow and support our su- 
preme court of law as to endow and support our 
supreme university. They cannot do it; they will not 
do it; and, as free men, we would not have them do 
it if they would. As to this, Mr. John W. Hoyt — a 
man who for years has nobly led in the effort to estab- 

ai8 



UNIVERSITY OF THE UNITED STATES 

lish a national university — uses these strong words: 
"What should the nation undertake to accomplish? 
What the citizen has not done and cannot do, is our 
answer. The citizen may create a very worthy and 
quite important private institution, some of which 
may be named today, but no citizen, however great 
his fortune, and no single commonwealth, much less 
any sectarian organization or any combination of these, 
can create an institution that shall be so wholly free 
from bias of any and every sort; that shall complete 
our public educational system; that shall exert so 
nationalizing and harmonizing an influence upon all por- 
tions of our great country; that shall be always ready 
to meet the demands of the government for service in 
whatsoever field, and that shall at the same time secure 
to the United States an acknowledged ascendancy in 
the ever-widening field of intellectual activity." 

A university bears the stamp of its origin. What- 
ever its origin, the university ennobles it. But a na- 
tional university must spring from the people. It 
must be paid for by them; and it must have its final 
justification in the upbuilding of the nation. What- 
ever institutions the people need, the people must 
create and control. That this can be done wisely is 
no matter of theory. With all their mistakes and 
crudities, the state universities of this country con- 
stitute the most hopeful feature in our whole educa- 
tional system. Doubtless the weakness and folly of 
the people have affected them injuriously from time to 
219 



UNIVERSITY OF THE UNITED STATES 

time. This is not the point. We must think of the effect 
they have had in curing the people of weakness and 
folly. ' ' The history of Iowa, ' ' says Dr. Angell, ' ' is 
the history of her state university." The same thing 
is grandly and emphatically true of Dr. Angell' s own 
state of Michigan. In its degree the history of every 
state is molded by its highest institution of learning. 
As I have had occasion to say once before, — 
"Many trials are made in popular government; 
many blunders are committed before any given piece 
of work falls into the hands of competent men. But 
mistakes are a source of education. Sooner or later 
the right man will be found and the right management 
of a public institution will justify itself. What is well 
done can never be wholly undone. In the long run, 
few institutions are less subject to partisan influence 
than a state university. When the foul grip of the 
spoilsman is once unloosed, it can never be restored. 
In the evil days which befell the politics of Virginia, 
when the fair name of the state was traded upon by 
spoilsmen of every party, of every degree, the one thing 
in the state never touched by them was the honor of the 
University of Virginia. And amid all the scandal and 
disorder which followed our civil war, what finger of 
evil has been laid on the Smithsonian Institution or 
the Military Academy at West Point .^ On that which 
is intended for no venal end, the people will tolerate 
no venal domination. In due time the management of 
•every public institution will be abreast of the highest 



UNIVERSITY OF THE UNITED STATES 

popular opinion. Sooner or later the wise man leads ; 
for his ability to lead is at once the test and proof 
of his wisdom." 

Some of the half-hearted friends of the national 
university have been fearful lest partisan influence 
should control it. They fear lest it should become a 
prey to the evils which have disgraced our Civil 
Service ; lest the shadow of the boss should darken 
the doors of the university with the paralyzing influ- 
ence which it has exerted on the employees of the 
Custom House. I believe this to be a groundless 
fear. All plans for a national university provide for 
a non-partisan board of control. Its ex officio mem- 
bers are to be chosen from the ablest jurists and wisest 
men of science the country can claim. Such a board 
now controls the National Museum and the Smithso- 
nian Institution; and no accusation of partisanship or 
favoritism has ever been brought against it. 

A university could not be otherwise than free. Its 
faculty could respond only to the noblest influences. 
No man could receive an appointment of national 
prominence, in the face of glaring unfitness; and each 
man chosen to a position in a national faculty would 
feel the honor of his profession at stake in repelling all 
degrading influences. Even if occasionally an unwise 
appointment should be made, the action would correct 
itself. To a university, men and women go for indi- 
vidual help and training. A pretender in a university 
could not give such help. His presence is soon 



UNIVERSITY OF THE UNITED STATES 

detected by his fellows and by his students. The latter 
he could not harm, for he could not retain them. By 
the side of his fellows he could not maintain himself. 
No body of men is so resistant to coercion or con- 
tamination as a university faculty. A scholar is a 
free man. He has always been so. He will always 
remain so. The danger, that a body of men such as 
constitute the university faculty of Harvard or Yale or 
Columbia or Princeton or Chicago or Cornell would 
be contaminated by Washington politics, is sheer non- 
sense. Such an idea has no basis in experience. It is 
urged only for lack of better arguments. Such oppo- 
sition to the national university as has yet appeared 
seems to rest on distrust of democracy itself or on 
concealed hatred of secular education. To one or 
the other of these influences can be traced nearly 
every assault yet made on any part of the system of 
popular education. 

The fear that the university would be contaminated 
by political associations is therefore groundless. But 
what about the hope from such associations ? An edu- 
cated politician may become a statesman, and we may 
look for tremendous results for good from the pres- 
ence of trained economists and historians and jurists 
at the national capital. It would in itself be an influ- 
ence for good legislation and good administration 
greater than any that we know, as President Cleve- 
land said at Princeton University on the occasion of its 
sesquicentennial celebration : 



UNIVERSITY OF THE UNITED STATES 

"The worth of educated men in purifying and 
steadying popular sentiment would be more useful if 
it were less spasmodic and occasional. . . . Our 
people readily listen to those who exhibit a real fel- 
lowship and friendly and habitual interest in all that 
concerns the common welfare. Such a condition of 
intimacy would not only improve the general political 
atmosphere, but would vastly increase the influence 
of our universities in their efforts to prevent popular 
delusions or correct them before they reach an acute 
or dangerous stage." 

< The scholars and investigators now maintained at 
Washington exert an influence far beyond that of their 
official position. If the Harvard faculty and its grad- 
uate students met on the Capitol hill, if their influence 
were in the departmental work, and their presence in 
social life, Washington would become a changed city. 
To the force of high training and academic self-devo- 
tion is to be traced the immense influence exerted in 
Washington by Joseph Henry, Spencer F. Baird, and 
Brown Goode., Of such men as these are universities 
made. When such men are systematically selected 
from our body of university professors and brought 
to Washington and allowed to surround themselves 
with like men of the next generation, we shall indeed 
have a national capital. By this means we shall create 
the best guarantee of the perpetuity of our Republic; 
that it shall not, like the republics of old, * ' go down 
in unreason, anarchy, and blood." In the long run, 

223 



UNIVERSITY OF THE UNITED STATES 



the voters of a nation must be led by its wisest men. 
Their wisdom must become the wisdom of the many, 
else the nation will perish. A university is simply a 
contrivance for making wisdom effective by surround- 
ing wise men with the conditions most favorable for 
rendering wisdom contagious. There is no instru- 
ment of political, social, or administrative reform to 
be compared with the influence of a national uni- 
versity. 



Z24 



XII. 

COLLEGE SPIRIT.* 

COLLEGE SPIRIT is the esprit de corps 
among college men, the feeling shared by 
all who have breathed the same college 
atmosphere. That each successful college 
must have a college atmosphere and that this atmos- 
phere must find its expression in college spirit we are all 
agreed. We do not seem quite so sure as to the best 
form this spirit should take. Doubtless the atmos- 
phere should be one of plain living and high thinking, 
with flashes of color from men of gifted personality; 
one of mutual help and mutual forbearance, with the 
struggles and rewards of after-life showing more or 
less clearly in perspective. Doubtless the college • 
spirit should be one of comradery in worthy ambi- 
tions, of full-tempered jollity, with a strong undercur- 
rent of something which is very like patriotism. Not 
"my college right or wrong," but "my college; 
when she is wrong, I will do everything to make her 
right. I believe in her. I glory in her good name. 
I wish her degree to be a mark of honor. I will sac- 
rifice my convenience, my fun, my success even to 
save her good name from tarnish. ' ' 

*Abstract ot an address delivered in April, igoj, at the 
University of Missouri. 

225 



COLLEGE SPIRIT 



There is no better definition of the college spirit 
than that given in the old University of Greifeswald 
nearly 400 years ago. This was the phrase of Ulrich 
von Hutten, " Gemeingeist unter freien Geistern, " 
' ' Comradeship among free spirits. " * ' Free should 
the scholar be, free and brave;" for men whose minds 
are free should find harmony in action. The true 
college spirit is the working together of good men for 
good ends, for broad, fearless, helpful life, arising 
from sound impulses within. 

We breed college spirit by the development of 
college men of the broad, large, helpful, hopeful 
type. To this end we must do away with the dread 
of "the rod behind the mirror." We must make 
college work not a succession of pointless tasks, but 
every part of it must be made real, vital, — a part of 
life, ' ' striking the heart of the youth in flame. ' ' We 
must offer as rewards not cheap^toys and prizes, but in- 
centives which are natural and enduring. For him who 
works, large room for work should be opened. The 
idlers should be taken to the edge of the campus and 
quietly dropped off. The privileges of the college be- 
long to those who can use them. Coworking comes 
from working. Without habits of industry there can 
be no sound college spirit. Vices divide men. Vir- 
tue brings them together. With idleness banished 
from the campus, most of the other vices of academic 
life would soon disappear. 

In this matter false notions are prevalent. I have 
226 



COLLEGE SPIRIT 



heard college presidents, who have tried to promote 
industry, accused of ' ' breaking up college spirit, ' ' as 
though idleness and trickery, in the topsy-turvy col- 
lege world, had come to stand among the virtues. To 
make the college a place of serious work is to prepare 
the way for college spirit. It is clearing the ground 
for better crops. The true college spirit considers the 
good of the college, not the pleasure of the individual. 
To do one's level best for the college and for one's 
fellows, leaves no selfish residuum. It was a Prince- 
ton man who, when his leg was broken in the football 
field, rejoiced that it was not one of the first team 
that was hurt. This is a type of the Princeton spirit, 
and it rises from the football field to make its influ- 
ence felt in other things. It is college spirit that leads 
the player to struggle like a bulldog in the game when 
a moment's weakening would mean defeat. It is col- 
lege spirit of the same sort which leads the men to 
cheer the good play of their rivals. In little things as 
in big, it is the one who is most courteous to his rivals, 
most considerate among his equals, who will never let 
go when he ought to hold on. 

There are other kinds of spirit abroad in college 
life and some of these the ignorant mistake for college 
spirit. I have heard of spirits of mischief, of spirits 
that dance by night, of spirits of rye, and spirits that 
arise from a beer cask. There are some who think 
that spirits of such sorts are all that a college can pro- 
duce, and that college spirit at the best is but another 
227 



COLLEGE SPIRIT 



name for deviltry and dissipation. But the convivi- 
ality of the ' ' beer-bust ' ' or the champagne supper is 
but a spurious imitation of the good-fellowship of sane 
men. 

After a great game of football in a large city, I 
passed, one evening, by the open door of a fashion- 
able saloon. It was full of college boys, resplendent 
in the green and gray of their college, celebrating on 
unsteady legs their team's great victory. With faces 
as red as the sweaters of their opponents they were 
singing maudlin college songs, full of patriotic liquor. 
They thought themselves possessed of college spirit. 
But the passers-by did not look on the scene in that 
light. It was clear to them that certain college men 
mistook drunkenness for manliness, and after the 
fashion of passers-by, they threw the whole blame on 
the college. The students of a college fix its reputa- 
tion, and it may take years of honest effort to out- 
grow a single drunken escapade. 

I once heard a graduate of the Boston Institute of 
Technology make this plea to a body of students of 
another institution: "Never carry your colors into a 
saloon. If you must disgrace yourself, do it in the 
name of some one else. When we visited a saloon 
in Boston," he said, "we always gave the Harvard 
yell. ' ' You may not care for your own disgrace, but 
do not make your college party to it. If you must 
visit saloons to express your feelings, do not take your 
college with you. If you must scream, give the 

228 



COLLEGE SPIRIT 



other fellow's yell. Perhaps if you do this, some 
other fellow may whip the breath out of you. Be a 
martyr if it must be, but die rather than disgrace your 
college. 

To form a college atmosphere, there should be free 
intercourse among students. The professional schools 
of a university may be in a great city, but a college 
should be in a town so small that college interests 
overshadow all others. The college spirit burns dimly 
in a great city. A small town and a large campus rep- 
resent the ideal condition, with a great city not too far 
away. Higher education mostly begins when a boy 
goes away from home. You cannot get it on the street 
cars. In the German universities they recognize two 
classes of university men, real students and "spur- 
studenten," or railway-track students, those who live 
at home and come and go without becoming an actual 
part of the university. In a great city all students are 
likely to be " spur-studenten. ' ' Unless men can get 
together, college spirit and college atmosphere are 
well nigh impossible. The unrest in regard to the 
four years' college course in our great urban universi- 
ties stands in evidence of this fact. The men want to 
get into professional work, because the college course 
lacks its best element, the force of comradeship. 

If our college faculties had the academic courage 

and academic patriotism which our people have the 

right to demand of them, most of the evils of college 

life would speedily disappear. The worst training a 

229 



COLLEGE SPIRIT 



young man can have is that of physical and intellectual 
idleness. Free education should be reserved for those 
who have the mind and the will to receive it. There 
is no education without effort. Those who do not 
want an education have no place in college. A firm 
insistence on the demands of scholarship would do 
away with rowdies and rowdyism. 

It is not often the real scholar that leads in rushing 
and hazing. The class rush is a product of sheer 
rowdyism. It is the work of the college bullies. It 
is dangerous because it has no time limit, no rules, 
no training. When a man is hurt in its rough-and- 
tumble activity, the blame falls and rightly so on the 
college. 

Of the same nature is hazing, with this difference 
that hazing is essentially the coward's part. It is half 
a dozen against one, and always involves infringement 
of the rights and the liberties of free men. Such affairs 
are not indications of college spirit. They are not, 
like amateur athletics, in aid of the good name of the 
college. It does not enhance the reputation of one of 
our great state universities that the papers are full of 
the hair-cutting scrapes of her freshmen and sopho- 
mores. It adds nothing to the glory of another insti- 
tution of honored name that her sophomores break up 
the freshman dance by throwing skunks into the ball- 
room. It is against the good name of any college 
that sophomore bullies carry away freshman class 
presidents or lock up the escorts of ladies at a junior 

2,30 



COLLEGE SPIRIT 



ball. It is not to the credit of any institution that 
bogus programs and anonymous insults, inane or 
obscene, are circulated on its campus. Stealing ice- 
cream is very much like ordinary stealing, and rowdy- 
ism in all its forms makes the development of honest 
college spirit hopeless. Comradeship among free 
spirits, — what decent man cares to be the comrade 
of a bully? 

It is a weakness of our state universities that their 
students sometimes mistake rowdyism for spirit and 
brutality for democracy. These institutions are thor- 
oughly democratic, that is a matter of course, but we 
must not forget that democracy is not inconsistent 
with courtesy. Other things being equal, the better 
the manners, the better the man. The same spirit 
that leads to rowdyism in a state institution reappears 
as imbecility in some other kinds of colleges. There 
is little choice between the two. It is lack of inventive 
power that leads the midnight student to take the 
president's carriage to pieces, to put his cow into the 
bell-tower or to stack up the gates of the town in his 
back yard. It is imbecility that leads college men to 
assert their own independence by discourtesy to col- 
lege women. It is imbecility that causes college 
boys to take up one after another a series of unpleas- 
ant fads, the fad of swiping signs, of stealing spoons, 
of running away with some one's bric-a-brac. 

Another peculiarly disagreeable fad, caught from 
the street gamin, is seen or heard at some of our ath- 

a3i 



COLLEGE SPIRIT 



letic games. The mob at a ball game tries to rattle 
the pitcher, to confuse the catcher, or to so crowd 
about that an opposing team has not only the local 
team to meet, but the whole student body as well. It 
is not genuine college spirit that has turned many a 
football game in the Middle West into something very 
much like a riot. The institution that permits this 
sort of thing consents to its own disgrace. It is upon 
the apathy of college faculties that the blame must 
finally rest. It is for such performances as these 
that aristocratic Harvard has invented the term of 
* ' mucker. ' ' Whatever else Harvard may be, she is 
"anti-mucker" through and through. The move- 
ment toward athletic courtesy perhaps had its origin 
in Harvard, and I hope for the spread of its influence. 
When a Yale batter strikes a foul and returns to his 
base, he finds the Harvard catcher handing him his 
bat. That a man may play a strenuous game, the 
fiercest ever seen on the gridiron, and yet keep the 
speech and the manners of a gentleman, is one of the 
lessons Harvard may teach us, and we of the West 
cannot listen to any better lesson in college spirit. 

Our student bodies as well as our college faculties 
have been too tolerant of petty trickery. This is 
shown in student elections, which would often give 
points to the most corrupt of city governments. The 
man of college spirit will vote for the best representa- 
tive of the college. The vulgar college politician sees 
only the chance of combination. Many men will even 

232 



COLLEGE SPIRIT 



prostitute their fraternity relations by making that 
association a mere means of political influence. Presi- 
dent White used to call ' ' college politics a pewter im- 
itation of a pinchbeck original." I have never known 
a successful politician of the ' ' win at any cost ' ' sort 
who became a useful man in after-life. I have known 
some who have risen in politics — risen for a while 
until they have been found out. As grown men they 
have disgraced the state, just as, when boys, they 
brought their college into ill-repute. Cheating in 
examinations is of a piece with cheating in politics. 
A sound college spirit finds no place for such things. 
The same evil spirit which at times controls stu- 
dent elections often works havoc with the usefulness 
of athletics. I believe thoroughly in college athletics. 
I have taken my part in them in college and out, and 
I know that other things being equal, the athletic man 
is worth more to the community than other kinds of 
men. But other things may not be equal. The ath- 
letic tramp should receive no academic welcome. The 
athletic parasite is no better than any other parasite. 
The man who is in college for athletics alone, disgraces 
the college, degrades athletics and shuts out a better 
man from his place on the team. In tolerating the 
presence of athletes who do not study, the college 
faculty becomes party to a fraud. Some of our great- 
est institutions stand disgraced in the eyes of the col- 
lege world, by reason of the methods employed to 
win football victories. 

353 



COLLEGE SPIRIT 



At the best, athletics is a by-play in the business 
of education, most useful in their place, but most 
damaging if it breaks down academic standards. To 
relieve football men from all necessity of scholar- 
ship during the football period is to strike a blow at the 
dignity and honesty of the college. More than one 
institution is doing this at the present time. The col- 
lege that does its duty to its students is the one in 
which the football tramp, the professional athlete, 
finds no place. Nothing I have seen in the Univer- 
sity of Missouri has pleased me more than the firm 
stand it has taken for decency in athletics, and that 
too when the traditions of fraud, the impulse to win at 
any cost, were at their very strongest. 

On the girls as well as on the boys falls the duty of 
maintaining college spirit. To create the sense of 
manly dignity is largely woman's work. To be 
drawn into college combinations and voted like lambs 
at the will of some shrewd manipulator has been too 
often women's experience in college politics. Young 
women, think for yourselves. Don't ask the politi- 
cians how the candidates stand. You can get better 
information from the registrar. Don't behave as if 
you needed a guardian. Don't carry your social 
affairs into the recitation rooms. Let society have its 
place and time, but do not mix its demands with those 
of study. If there are too many balls in college 
society and they last too long, have the courage to 
refuse to go, the courage to refuse to stay after it is 



COLLEGE SPIRIT 



time for sleep. If dances run on without time limit, 
as they do in some places, it is your duty to make 
your own limit, before the faculty awakes to its re- 
sponsibility and lays down your duty for you. Do 
not be put into false positions. Young men value 
young women more when their society is not to be 
had too easily. I heard the other day these words 
uttered by a student, and they were words of wisdom : 
' ' When a girl' s name is bandied about the campus, it 
is a hard proposition for her to live it down. ' ' 

The future of co-education rests with the young 
women and with them alone. If they are worthy of 
their opportunity, as the vast majority are, the cavil- 
ing of provincial ignorance will not harm them. The 
reputation of the college is made by its students, 
women as well as men, and on the women rests a 
large responsibility for the growth of a healthy college 
spirit. 

The process of "knocking" is opposed to the 
growth of college spirit. There is no use in com- 
plaining for complaint's sake. If you don't like 
things as they are, turn in and make them better, or 
go somewhere else. If the habit of faultfinding is 
deep-seated, learn your college song. Practice at 
nights upon your college yell. It will do you good. 
There is a great moral lesson in learning to shout in 
unison. To ' ' root ' ' in perfect time at the call of the 
yell-leader is a college education in itself. To keep in 
touch with men is the best antidote for cynicism. 
23s 



COLLEGE SPIRIT 



Snobbishness is opposed to college spirit. It is 
not a fault of the West, where few students are reared 
on Mellin' s food and finished on champagne. We have 
few young men who tread on velvet and take a col- 
lege course by proxy. The Harvard man who keeps 
a groom for his horse, a groom for himself, and a 
groom for each of his studies, has few imitators in the 
West. In the strenuous, rugged West, there is little 
room for the "Laodicean club," the association of 
those who are neither hot nor cold, but altogether 
luke-warm. 

But if we lack the perfect aristocrat, we have in 
the West our own cliques and divisions. The frater- 
nity system at its best is an aid to scholarship, to 
manners and to character; at its worst, it is a basis for 
vulgar dissension. The influence of a fraternity de- 
pends on the men who are in it. If these are above 
the average in character and work, it is lucky for the 
average man to be chosen into it. If they are below 
the average in this regard, the average man loses by 
joining his fortunes with it. When fraternities are 
sources of disorganization, there is something wrong 
in them or in the institution. 

The evil of dissipation exists in college as outside 
of it. The average boy, or rather the boy a little 
below the average, believes that some degree of man- 
liness inheres in getting drunk. Bismarck is reputed 
to have said that in the universities of Germany ' ' one- 
third the students work themselves to death, one-third 

236 



COLLEGE SPIRIT 



drink themselves to death, and the other third govern 
Europe." Something like this takes place in Amer- 
ica, though the percentage of those who die of drink 
is less and the percentage of those who die of hard 
work is still lower. But too many of our college stu- 
dents have wrecked their lives even before they have 
realized the strength and the duties of manhood. 

The finest piece of mechanism in all the universe 
is the brain of man. In this complex structure, with 
its millions of connecting cells, we can form images 
of the world about us, correct so far as they go. To 
retain these images, to compare them, to infer rela- 
tions of cause and effect and to transfer thought into 
action is man's privilege. In proportion to the exact- 
ness of these operations is the soundness, the value of 
the man. The wise man protects his brain, and the 
mind, which is its manipulator, from all that would do 
harm. Vice is our name for self-inflicted injury, 
and every stimulant or narcotic — every drug that 
leaves its mark of weakness on the brain, is the begin- 
ning of vice. Vice means brain decay. ' ' Death is a 
thing cleaner than vice," and in the long run it is 
more profitable. False ideas of manliness, false con- 
ceptions of good-fellowship, wreck many a young man 
of otherwise good intentions. The sinner is the man 
who cannot say no. 

The young man's first duty is toward his after- 
self. So live that your after-self, the man you ought 
to be, may be possible and actual. Far away in the 

237 



COLLEGE SPIRIT 



twenties, the thirties of our century, he is awaiting his 
time. His body, his brain, his soul are in your boy- 
ish hands today. He cannot help himself. Will you 
hand over to him a brain unspoiled by lust or dissipa- 
tion, a mind trained to think and act, a nervous sys- 
tem true as a dial in its response to environment? 
Will you, college boy of the twentieth century, let 
him come in his time as a man among men ? Or will 
you throw away his patrimony ? Will you turn over 
to him a brain distorted, a mind diseased, a will un- 
trained to action, a spinal cord grown through and 
through with the vile harvest we call ' ' wild oats ' ' ? 
Will you let him come, taking your place, gaining 
through your experiences, your joys, building on 
them as his own ? Or will you wantonly fling it all 
away, careless that the man you might have been 
shall never be ? 

In all our colleges we are taught that the athlete 
must not break training rules. The pitcher who 
smokes a cigarette gives away the game. The punter 
who dances loses the goal, the sprinter who takes a 
convivial glass of beer breaks no record. His record 
breaks him. Some day we shall realize that the game 
of life is more strenuous than the game of football, 
more intricate than pitching curves, more difficult than 
punting. We should keep in trim for it. We must 
remember training rules. The rules that win the 
football game are good also for success in business. 
Half the strength of young America is wasted in the 

238 



COLLEGE SPIRIT 



dissipation of drinking or smoking. If we keep the 
training rules of life in literal honesty, we shall win a 
host of prizes that otherwise we should lose. Final 
success goes to the few, the very few, alas, who 
throughout life keep mind and soul and body clean. 

"Gemeingeist unter freien Geistern," the "com- 
radeship of free souls," — this is the meaning of true 
college spirit. Freedom of the soul means freedom 
of the mind, freedom of the brain. It is said in the 
litany that Hi's " service is perfect freedom." Igno- 
rance holds men in bondage; so do selfishness, stu- 
pidity and vice. The service of God and of man is 
found in casting off these things. In freedom we 
find abundance of life. The scholar should be a man 
in the full life of the world. "The color of life is 
red," and the scholar of today is no longer a dim- 
eyed monk with a grammarian's cough. He is a 
worker in the rush of the century — a lover of nature 
and an artist in building the lives of men. 



^39 



XIII. 
POLITICS IN THE SCHOOLS. 



1 



"^HE conspicuous failure of democracy in the 
United States has been in its inabihty to 
conduct local business on business prin- 
ciples. In the government of Great Britain 
just the reverse has been true. In the management 
of local and municipal matters the people of England 
have been most signally successful. It is in this part 
of the British government that government by the 
people and for the people has had fullest play. With- 
out going into details as to the failure of county and 
of city government in America, we may accept a classi- 
fication of the causes of such failure as lately given by 
Dr. Walter F. Willcox of Cornell. 

' ' There are, ' ' says Dr. Willcox, ' ' three fundamen- 
tal evils in the government of our cities. The first is 
economic and consists in the waste of public funds. The 
second is political in the true sense and consists in the 
inadequacy of municipal service. The third is moral 
and consists in the corruption of civic authority for the 
furtherance of individual ends. The chief importance of 
this third evil is that it throws politics into disrepute and 
degrades civic ideals, thus rendering cooperation for the 
attainment of truly political ends well nigh impossible. ' ' 

240 



POLITICS IN THE SCHOOLS 

To this analysis of sources of evil, which exist in 
all countries and under all forms of government, we 
may add three others, which are more or less peculiar 
to America and scarcely less baneful in their influence. 
These are, the influence of private control of public 
functions, the federal organization of the city, and the 
lack of serious interest on the part of our people. As 
to the first of these, the use of public franchises by 
individuals and corporations and their corrupt con- 
trol of the officers of city and state are already the 
basis of a vast amount of discussion. Its natural 
remedy is the public performance of public functions, 
a system which has also its dangers and difficulties, 
which it is not my purpose now to consider. 

In the next place, we have been misled by false 
analogies in forming our municipal charters. We 
treat our cities as if each was a confederation of wards 
and precincts in the same way that the United States 
is a confederation of self-ruling communities. This is 
not true in fact and therefore works badly in practice. 
The city is not a confederation of wards. It is an 
association of men, and it is citizens and not wards 
that should be represented in its councils. The prin- 
ciple of proportional representation is therefore essen- 
tial to its government by the people. Let the citizens 
choose as their representatives those men who repre- 
sent them best regardless of all questions of what 
street they live on or in what quarter they do their 
business. The municipality exists for the mutual bene- 
241 



POLITICS IN THE SCHOOLS 

fit and the mutual protection of its citizens. It is 
not a creation of the separate wards and precincts 
into which, for purposes of voting, the town may be 
divided. To the persistence of the ward system, to 
the use of the machinery of the federal United States 
where federation does not exist, the failure of our city 
charters is in great part due. 

A further source of inefficiency in local govern- 
ment lies in the fact that we have never yet taken it 
seriously. As a people we have a fine sense of humor 
and it is exercised impartially in all directions. A 
piece of gross corruption or inefficiency serves as the 
point of a joke. It ends with a newspaper cartoon. 
And as a cartoon may be as unjust as any other form 
of criticism, it fails to be taken in evidence by the 
people. An administrative blunder or crime has no 
adequate punishment. We never know the real facts 
in the case and in the hopelessly good nature of the 
American people, whether it has taken place or not, 
it is equally and speedily forgiven. From this lack 
of seriousness as to local matters which we can con- 
trol, coupled with our universal interest in national 
affairs on which even a whole state exerts but a trifling 
influence, arises the subordination of local issues to 
those which divide our two great political parties. 
This subordination of local to national affairs is a 
great source of weakness and corruption. The plea 
that bad men must be chosen at home for the sake of 
the party at large is heard at every election and it is 

242 



POLITICS IN THE SCHOOLS 

always false and degrading. It is said that the only 
' ' straight ticket ' ' a good citizen has the right to vote 
is the "one with the crooked names scratched off 
it." If this rule were followed by all that think 
themselves good citizens, the record of city govern- 
ment would be very different from what it is now. 

But my purpose at this time is not to consider the 
general failure of city administration but its particular 
failure in the matter of public schools. Thus far most 
of our cities have failed to give the people the school 
system which they pay for, the one which they deserve, 
and which is essential to the best development of their 
children. 

This failure falls under the second of Dr. Will- 
cox's classes: "The inadequacy of municipal ser- 
vice. ' ' But the cause of the failure lies mostly with 
the third class of evils: "The corruption of civic 
authority for the furtherance of individual ends." 
In other words, the school service in most of our 
cities is very bad and it is bad because the schools are 
tampered with and used as tools to enrich or advance 
those persons who have them in charge. This is what 
is meant by the common phrase: "Our schools are 
poor because they are in politics." 

The necessity of schools is unquestioned and our 
people from the first have met this need by coopera- 
tive action. This results in free public schools, open 
to all, and under the domination of no religious sect 
and no political party. With some minor differences 

243 



POLITICS IN THE SCHOOLS 

of opinion, our people are all practically agreed on 
this. Our schools from the kindergarten to the uni- 
versity must be free, public, and uncontrolled by sect 
or party. On no other principle of government is 
there such perfect harmony. Because we make our 
schools public and free their administration becomes 
an affair of government. Our government is always 
just as good as the people demand and never any 
better. It must be the same with our schools. When 
general politics are corrupt good public schools are 
impossible. 

Three elements are necessary in the administration 
of public schools. First, the presence of a board of 
control, representing the people, attending to the 
finances of the school and giving to the promotion of 
its interests a degree of time and attention which the 
body of the people could not give. This we call the 
Board of Trustees. Second, an educational expert 
who shall know schools on the one hand, and teachers 
on the other, who shall know educational aims and 
ideals, their relative place and value and the means by 
which they may be carried out. Such ends cannot be 
served by the governing board because success de- 
mands that this work be a life study, a profession, and 
professional knowledge and training cannot be acquired 
by men engaged in matters outside the schools. Such 
an educational manager we term the superintendent 
of schools. The third element is that of tramed and 
competent teachers. To know these teachers and how 

244 



POLITICS IN THE SCHOOLS 

to secure them is of itself a life profession. Schools 
do not build themselves up without intelligence and 
effort, and to bring good teachers together, each in 
his proper place, is the highest educational art. 

While this art is frequently realized in our city 
schools, it is the exception rather than the rule. In 
most of our cities the schools are very inferior in 
character and influence to what they might or should 
be. They are often not as good as the private schools 
they have displaced and not as good proportionally as 
the ungraded district schools of the country. Such 
failure, wherever it occurs, is traceable to one cause, 
the presence of incompetent teachers, through failure 
of the appointing power which is itself oppressed or 
superseded by the pressure of personal influence. In 
other words, what ails our schools is the meddling of 
outside interests. This begins with the school board; 
its evils appear in the bad choice of teachers, and it is 
the children, for whom alone the schools exist, who 
finally suffer. 

The school board is supposed to be made up of 
men of wisdom, discretion and public spirit, who rep- 
resent the interests of the people at large and to whom 
the management of the schools can be safely entrusted. 
It is the first duty of these men to associate with them- 
selves an expert in education, a superintendent of 
schools, a man competent to choose, control and dis- 
miss individual teachers, one who has executive ability, 
by which term is meant the power of working out a 

245 



POLITICS IN THE SCHOOLS 

policy through the agency of other men or women. 
When these relations are normal we always have good 
schools. The bad schools exist where the school 
board wantonly betrays the trust of the people or 
when its members are too ignorant to perform the 
functions assigned to them. Schools are bad only 
when they are in the hands of bad teachers, teachers 
ignorant, indifferent or corrupt. Bad teachers are 
chosen mainly by bad men, men who are ignorant, 
indifferent or corrupt. Such choice may happen under 
a good board which has made an unfortunate choice 
of superintendent. But this does not often take 
place, nor will its consequences last very long, for a 
good board seldom repeats its mistakes. Sometimes 
bad appointments are made knowingly by a good su- 
perintendent, placed in a position where he thinks that 
he cannot help himself But this condition again 
rarely lasts long, for the good superintendent forced 
to do wrong either saves his honor by resigning or 
saves his position by ceasing to be good. 

We may classify the motives which lead school 
boards to choose incompetent teachers under three 
heads, party spoils, political perquisites, and personal 
spoils. 

When a city election is carried it sometimes hap- 
pens that teachers do active service for the party. 
Among those who have profited by these efforts may 
be the school board itself, elected as partisans and 
chosen from the list of minor political heelers by our 

246 



POLITICS IN THE SCHOOLS 

vicious ward system. The higher prizes are reserved 
for those who make politics a business, but to the 
teacher-politicians the party managers can offer places 
in the schools. The political bosses of one party or 
another order this, and the school board, their crea- 
tures, simply register their decree. Coarse and un- 
democratic as this procedure is, there are many 
teachers in our state who strain every nerve to be- 
come its beneficiaries. 

Political perquisites occur when the school board 
or its leaders are strong enough to repay by their 
patronage those who have worked directly in their 
interest. Thus a teacher who has worked success- 
fully for the election of a member of the board from 
his ward may reasonably look to being advanced 
to a principalship. In such case, by an agreement 
among themselves, the representatives of the domi- 
nant party in each ward may take care of his own. 
They divide up the places among themselves and for 
each appointment made some particular member and 
not the whole board is responsible. Usually there are 
places enough to meet the needs of personal perqui- 
sites as well as those of party spoils. Which demand 
is attended to first depends upon the relative rank and 
greediness of the bosses, big and little. 

Both these forms of corruption are due to party 
fealty and hence have to some degree a public rela- 
tion. They may not even prevent the choice in many 
cases of teachers of real efficiency because some mem- 
247 



POLITICS IN THE SCHOOLS 

bers of the board are all the more conscientious, since 
they do not share their individual responsibility. 

The third class is that of personal spoils. It some- 
times happens that members of school boards look 
upon their relation to the schools as purely personal, 
rather than political. They have been chosen to this 
position to repay them for their own work for some 
candidate or party and this is the chance offered to 
get their money back. They are not in politics for 
their health nor for glory nor for praise. They look 
only to what there is in it for them. Boards of this 
sort are constantly beset with financial scandals. Every 
purchase of school furniture, every adoption of school 
text-books involves a ' ' rake-off' ' for somebody and 
every rake-off gives a chance for a quarrel over the 
plunder, and, perhaps, for an exposure. The percent- 
age must be big enough to justify them m running 
-the risks. Such a board can be depended on to do 
the worst the law will let them, taking their chances 
of impeachment or the penitentiary. But even of this 
they have no great fear, for their election or appoint- 
ment indicates the presence of a " friend at court. ' ' 

A board composed mainly of spoilsmen first 
organizes a mutual society or trust by which the 
spoilsmen stand for each other's interests, shutting 
out the others from all responsibility for action, and all 
divisions of the spoils. Such a trust is known as the 
Solid Ten, or a Solid Eight or a Big Four or some 
other number, and this combination will take what it 

248 



POLITICS IN THE SCHOOLS 

can get, permitting no nonsense. If the board elects 
the superintendent, as it should under normal condi- 
tions, this official becomes a tool of this solid combi- 
nation and meekly carries out the orders they may 
give him. If the superintendent is chosen directly by 
the people, as in some cities, he finds himself in con- 
stant friction with his board. The board snubs him 
and ignores his plans and purposes, while for his part 
he may try to do the best he can in a condition where 
success is impossible. Still some good men who be- 
lieved that ' ' a public office is a public trust ' ' have 
served our cities well even under the most trying con- 
ditions. Usually the Solid Eight divide the minor 
places among their own number, giving each member 
as many places to fill as he sees fit. This action is of 
the same moral grade as the embezzlement of public 
funds and its results are equally disastrous. 

The statutes of the states require that each teacher 
should know a little something of various matters 
before receiving a license to teach. This minimum of 
knowledge and training must be met by every teacher 
who receives an appointment. Those teachers who 
stand at the bottom of the teaching profession, the 
least exacting of all professions, struggle for this min- 
imum, and once attaining it, regard an appointment as 
a favor, a piece of luck, and once on the pay-roll they 
have no further interest in professional advancement. 
The better class of teachers are in demand in better 
schools, where the laborer is worthy of his hire. They 
249 



POLITICS IN THE SCHOOLS 

are not ' ' hunting a job, ' ' nor are they ready to go 
out of their way to secure one. Hence the appli- 
cants with which mercenary boards have to deal 
belong mainly to the lowest class of teachers, those 
without professional interest, or child knowledge; 
without character or determination, persons wishing 
to get money with the least possible expenditure of 
effort. With such candidates individual members of 
boards have been known to do several things. Among 
these are (a) selling places outright, (b) putting in 
their own relatives, (c) trading them with other per- 
sons for personal favors, (d) paying debts of various 
sorts, sometimes those made most corruptly, (e) put- 
ting in their own dependents or those of others, ( f ) 
using them for purposes of charity. 

The motive in each of these cases may be different. 
The effect on the schools is alike evil. The children, 
under the influence of spoilsmen and spoilswomen, 
each day receive a dose of poison, of political corrup- 
tion. Competent, capable, self-respecting men and 
women will not take schools under any of these con- 
ditions. Good schools cannot be made except by 
such men and women. Of all these conditions, the 
one which makes the teacher an object of charity is 
perhaps the most mischievous. A good school can- 
not be a hospital for its teachers. 

The various forms of school corruption have a 
variety of evil results. These we may analyze as fol- 
lows: 

250 



POLITICS IN THE SCHOOLS 

1. They injure the schools by making good work 
impossible. 

2. They exclude good teachers. 

3. They exclude those who strive to rise in the 
profession by honorable means. 

4. They render places in the schools unstable. 
This evil has been remedied by a statute prohibiting 
removals except by a formal trial. This is an evil 
greater than instability as it tends to perpetuate the 
results of corruption. There are cities in which a 
statute against removal has led corrupt boards to enor- 
mously multiply the number of useless teachers by 
adding its own complement to those of its predeces- 
sors, thus greatly increasing the cost of the schools 
without good service. Where the spoils system ob- 
tains, rotation in office does no additional harm. 
Where good schools are desired the power of free 
removal is scarcely less important than the power of 
appointment. Competent superintendents will not 
abuse this power. Good managers do not make 
charges wantonly. 

5. Corrupt conditions keep the best men out of 
public school work. In general, a competent man 
will accept a college position at a far lower salary than 
he would demand in public school work. Graduate 
students in universities will choose a laboratory posi- 
tion at $600 to $1,000 in preference to a high school 
instructorship at $1,500 to $2,000, or a superintend- 
ency at $2,000 to $2,500. The university offers high 

251 



POLITICS IN THE SCHOOLS 

incentives, freedom from intrigue, and final reward for 
superior service. The public schools cannot guaran- 
tee anything. To be dismissed from any position in 
some of our cities involves no professional discredit, 
not even the need of explanation. The one thing to 
be explained is the inducement which led the teacher 
to accept such a position. 

The conditions described prevent cities from se- 
curing outside talent. In some great cities where the 
spoils system has been unchecked, no competent out- 
side teacher would ever think of applying for a posi- 
tion. The superintendent never thinks of looking 
outside for a teacher. A great city should be ever on 
the watch for the best talent in the region tributary to 
it. The city of San Francisco, for example, should 
b)e alert to bring in the best teachers of the coast to 
handle the work in its high schools and grammar 
schools. I have heard (1899) of but one case of its 
drawing a teacher from any other city or even of any 
attempt to do so. The principle of keeping ' ' our own 
schools for our own girls, ' ' wherever accepted, works 
badly for the schools. It is a species of educational 
corruption. In some cases a local department called a 
"normal" has been established so that "the girls who 
bave to teach ' ' will not need to go away from home 
for their training. But to go away from home is a 
necessary part of the teacher's training if teaching is 
to be in any degree a profession. The schools need 
new blood. The teacher needs new outlooks. In a 

252 



POLITICS IN THE SCHOOLS 

well-managed system no teacher will be appointed 
who has not had, as a teacher or as a student, some 
experience somewhere else. 

If teachers push themselves upward through un- 
professional means, teaching cannot be made a pro- 
fession. If intrigue and flattery, "wire-pulling" or 
"leg-pulling," masculine arts or feminine arts of 
swaying the appointing power, furnish means of ad- 
vancement, the nobler qualifications of love of learning 
and devotion to the needs of the children will not enter 
into the competition. 

Thus the ranks of our teachers become filled with 
those who know nothing and have no care to know, 
with those who use the office of teacher while seeking 
marriage or an opening in a law office; with those who 
pay more for the dead birds on their hats than for all 
the books they read, reckless of the fact that e very- 
bird killed wantonly leaves this world a little less worth, 
living in ; with those who know more of palmistry than 
of psychology, of euchre or the two-step than of the 
art of training children. 

The right organization of our schools will leave no 
place for this class of teachers. It will make teaching 
a profession not to be lightly undertaken or carelessly 
performed. It will bring back to the ranks of the 
public schools many of our most gifted men and 
women who now find their only attractive career in 
the overcrowded ranks of the instructorships in the 
colleges. 

253 



POLITICS IN THE SCHOOLS 

How shall we escape from the spoils system ? How 
shall we free our schools from personal interference in 
the interest of personal ends ? The best way to insure 
good schools is to secure the best superintendent pos- 
sible and then to give him full power to choose teach- 
ers. By this means, and by this alone, is it possible 
to adapt means to ends and make the school system 
of a city an instrument which can produce the best 
results. All great work is the realization of some 
ideal, and ideal in education, as elsewhere, is the ideal 
not of a board but of a man. When a man is in con- 
trol of affairs, a limiting statute prescribing what he 
shall not do is an impertinence. 

The next best way is to secure a superintendent 
through the means found necessary in the civil service. 
Let him attend to clerical affairs and select his teachers 
for him by competitive examination. Such a method 
is pursued in the service of most enlightened nations, 
and it has been found almost the only means of keep- 
ing this service free from corruption. The competi- 
tive examination is not an end in itself, but it is usually 
the choice of evils. It is never the best way ideally 
possible, for the surest way to select good servants is 
to trust a capable and honest man to pick them out. 
It becomes necessary when we have to deal with men 
we cannot trust. The civil service methods are used 
in default of capable and honest men. They serve to 
pick out fairly good public servants and to exclude 
political corruption and personal pulls. When the 

254 



POLITICS IN THE SCHOOLS 

school service is beset by vulgar politicians and time- 
servers anxious to help needy relatives and greedy 
applicants, a system of civil service examinations 
is our best remedy. But we must remember that 
no form of competitive examination is an end in 
itself. It is simply an evil which may be neces- 
sary until a higher civic morality and a higher sense 
of professional honor among teachers renders it 
superfluous. 

Without a competent and trusted superintendent a 
school system of the highest grade is impossible. But 
fair results of a lower order may be reached by the 
choice of teachers through competitive examinations. 
Without these, under the spoils system pure and 
simple the schools will be as bad as the bosses dare 
make them, and none can say that they are cowards. 
There is not much which they dare not do. 

Three ways to remedy the evils of politics in the 
schools may be suggested: 

I. We may appeal to statute. We may tie up 
the school board and superintendent by laws which 
shall make a personal or political appointment a mis- 
demeanor. We may place such tampering on the judi- 
cial level of embezzlement, where it morally belongs. 

But such criminality is hard to define and harder 
to prove. Besides, statutes avail little unless public 
opinion backs them. Because the people at large 
wink at politics in the schools, tolerate it, ignore it or 
consider it smart, our school boards feel justified in 



POLITICS IN THE SCHOOLS 

dividing the spoils. And there is never much value 
in restrictive laws. We have too many statutory- 
crimes already. Criminal law cannot go beyond 
public opinion without bringing itself into contempt 
and thus into inefifectiveness. Only gross offenses, 
such as sale of places for money or favor or giving 
them through charity, could be clearly proved, and 
under any statute even these could be seldom pun- 
ished. But after all there is a great educational force 
in the severe enforcement of a just law, even though 
its purpose be at first not understood. 

Negatively we can strengthen the case a little by 
repealing all statutes that strengthen the teacher's 
hold on his position. Most of these are in the interest 
of the incompetent teachers. They are intended to 
defend the beneficiaries of one administration from 
being thrown out by the next. The removal of any 
teacher that holds his place on a pull is likely to be a 
good thing for the schools. It should be left as easy 
as possible. 

There are certain precedents and methods in the 
schools of many cities which make it hard for teachers 
from the outside to secure a foothold. Better employ 
no native-born teachers than to accept no others. To 
move about is part of education, and teachers that 
have never been away from home are not likely to be 
very stimulating in their professional work. 

2. The second method is to educate the commu- 
nity. Let the people know what good schools ought 

256 



POLITICS IN THE SCHOOLS 

to be and how much the children suffer from being 
forced into any other kind. This is a slow method, 
but it is effectual. For this purpose there is nothing 
better than object lessons. There are certain cities in 
California which are object lessons in this regard. We 
cannot overestimate the value of their example. A 
competent superintendent can usually purify the board 
which selects him. Most poHtical crimes come from 
ignorance rather than from vicious intention. Very 
many of our officials are inefficient or corrupt simply 
because they do not know what the people have the 
right to expect them to do. There are some such 
who can be brought to take a pride in good schools, 
if they really see and understand them. There are 
some superintendents who do sound, honest work 
trusted by their boards and by their communities. 
Let the number increase. 

3. Educate the teachers. Quite as necessary as 
the training of the public is the bringing of the 
teachers to higher standards of professional honor. If 
the profession is to be raised above the level of wire- 
pulling we must all do our part. Let us individually 
cease to look toward pull and intrigue and favoritism, 
and to trust to the goodness of our records as teachers 
for our advancement. When our own records are 
clean we can give attention to the records of others. 
We should cease to honor wire-pullers by election to 
office in our associations. We should go as far as the 
demands of courtesy will let us in refusing them the 

z57 



POLITICS IN THE SCHOOLS 

right hand of professional fellowship. We should not 
vote for them when they are candidates for our 
suffrages. There is as much need of a code of honor 
in education as in medicine. When teaching becomes 
a profession the code will be superfluous, for no 
one really competent and enlightened will violate 
its natural provisions. Most teachers find positions 
through the help of other teachers. We should cease 
to give such help to the wire-puller, the schemer, the 
self-advertiser, the man who blows his own horn, what- 
ever the key, whether basso or soprano or falsetto. 
Some of our colleges refuse to recommend or even to 
recognize their own alumni if these have sought to rise 
in their profession by irregular means. 

It would be well if all colleges and normal schools 
should adopt this rule : That those who have sought 
or accepted a political pull should never receive their 
commendation, personal or official. It is not always 
easy to prove the truth in matters of this kind, but as 
such commendation is not a right, it is proper to with- 
hold it in case of doubt. The teacher is an accredited 
tribune of civilization. He should represent in the 
community intellectual soundness and moral upright- 
ness. In the minds of our forefathers his place as 
moral and intellectual guide stood side by side with 
that of the spiritual guide, the minister. If either 
calling has fallen from its first estate of honor it is the 
fault of the men who follow it. Clear-headed, simple- 
hearted, pure-souled teachers ennoble the profession. 

258 



POLITICS IN THE SCHOOLS 

Stupid, untrained, tricky teachers degrade it. And of 
this we may feel sure, our profession as a whole stands 
just about where the outside world thinks it does. The 
cold public hits the truth very exactly. Teachers are, 
as a rule, overworked and underpaid. At least we 
say so when we talk it over among ourselves. But 
I am sure that on the whole teachers get all that 
they are worth. The fault is in the lack of discrimi- 
nation between good ones and poor ones. Some 
teachers certainly are underpaid, grossly underpaid, 
when we consider the rewards of equal success in 
almost any other profession. But only real success of 
one sort or another receives any reward at all in most 
professions. The worthy and the worthless, the honest 
and the tricky, the enterprising and the indolent, the 
enlightened and the ignorant are not paid on the same 
schedule in any other profession. There are men in 
our public schools in California whose services would 
be cheap to any town at $5,000 a year or even 
$10,000. There are many others who would be 
dearly bought at $S a month. And some of each 
class are paid $1,000 or $2,000 or $3,000 alike, and all 
are lumped together by the politician and the public 
as ' ' school teachers. ' ' Sooner or later our people 
will see the difference and act accordingly. If we 
want better pay we must bring in better men and 
women, better personally and better professionally. 
To this end we must so conduct our profession that 
men and women cannot rise in it through unfair or 

259 



POLITICS IN THE SCHOOLS 

corrupt means, and we must give our help and recog- 
nition to those who will not do so. 

In the schools of today the history of the next 
generation is written. If there is corruption in the 
schools we shall see it in the body politic. The only 
danger which besets democracy is that of political 
corruption, of misuse of public funds and public trust 
for personal ends. Democracy has nothing to fear 
from outside force or domestic tyranny. Its worst 
enemy is in the dry rot of popular indifference to 
questions of right and wrong, which brings the wet 
rot of official imbecility and corruption. Eternal vigi- 
lance is the price of liberty, and the public school is 
the watch-tower on the walls of democracy. If these 
sentinels sleep, we shall waken to shame. 

Eternal vigilance is another name for civic devo- 
tion and moral awakening. And because the next 
generation must be intellectually and morally the 
reflex of the schools of today, reform in education 
is the most vital of all reforms. 



a6o 



XIV. 
THE LESSONS OF THE TRAGEDY. 

WE MEET today under the sway of a num- 
ber of different emotions. We would 
express our sorrow at the untimely death 
of a good man. We would show our 
regret that our nation has lost the Chief Magistrate 
of its choice. We would express our sympathy with 
the gentle woman who has been suddenly bereft of the 
kindest and most considerate of husbands. We are 
filled with shame that in our Republic, the land where 
all men are free and equal wherever they behave them- 
selves as men, the land which has no rulers save the 
public servants of its own choosing, a deed like this 
should be possible. We would express our detestation 
of that kind of political and social agitation which finds 
no method of working reform save through intimida- 
tion and killing. We would wish to find the true les- 
sons of this event and would not let even the least of 
them fall on our ears unheeded. 

And one plain lesson is this : Under democracy 
all violence is treason. Whosoever throws a stone at 
a scab teamster, whosoever fires a shot at the presi- 
dent of the United States, is an enemy of the Republic. 
He is guilty of high treason in his heart, and treason 
261 



THE LESSONS OF THE TRAGEDY 

in thought works itself out in lawlessness of action. 

The central fact of all democracy is agreement 
with law. It is our law ; we have made it. If it is 
wrong we can change it, but the compact of democ- 
racy is that we change it in peace. ' ' The sole source 
of power under God is the consent of the governed. ' ' 
This Cromwell once wrote across the statute books of 
Parliament. This our fathers wrote in other words in 
our own Constitution. The will of the people is the 
sole source of any statute you or I may be called on 
to obey. It is the decree of no army, the dictum of 
no president. It is the work of no aristocracy ; not of 
blood nor of wealth. It is simply our own under- 
standing that we have to do right, shall behave justly, 
shall live and let our neighbor live. If our law is 
tyrannous, it is our ignorance which has made it so, ' 
Let it pinch a little and we shall find out what hurts us. 
Then it will be time to change. Laws are made 
through the ballot, and through the ballot we can 
unmake them. There is no other honest way, no 
other way that is safe, and no other way that is 
effective. To break the peace is to invite tyranny. 
Lawlessness is the expression of weakness, of igno- 
rance, of unpatriotism. If tyranny provokes anarchy, 
so does anarchy necessitate tyranny. Confusion brings 
the man on horseback. It was to keep away both 
anarchy and tyranny that the public school was estab- 
lished in America, 

Three times has our nation been called upon to 

262 



• THE LESSONS OF THE TRAGEDY 

pass into the shadow of humiliation, and each time in 
the past it has learned its severe lesson. When Lincoln 
fell, slavery perished. To the American of today 
human slavery in a land of civilization is almost an 
impossible conception, yet many of us who think our- 
selves still young can remember when half of this land 
held other men in bondage and the dearest hope of 
freedom was that such things should not go on forever. 
I can remember when we looked forward to the time 
when ' ' at least the present form of slavery should be 
no more." For democracy and slavery could not 
subsist together. The Union could not stand — half 
slave, half free. 

The last words of Garfield were these : * ^Strmigu- 
latus pro Republica' ' (slain for the Republic). The 
feudal tyranny of the spoils system which had made 
republican administration a farce, has not had, since 
Garfield's time, a public defender. It has not vanished 
from our politics, but its place is where it belongs — 
among the petty wrongs of maladministration. 

Again a president is slain for the Republic — and 
the lesson is the homely one of peace and order, 
patience and justice, respect for ourselves through 
respect for the law, for public welfare, and for public 
right. 

For this country is passing through a time of storm 
and stress, a flurry of lawless sensationalism. The irre- 
sponsible journalism, the industrial wars, the display 
of hastily gotten wealth, the grasping of monopoly, 
263 



THE LESSONS OF THE TRAGEDY 

the walking delegate, the vulgar cartoon, the foul- 
mouthed agitator, the sympathetic strike, the unsym- 
pathetic lockout, are all symptoms of a single disease 
— the loss of patriotism, the decay of the sense of 
justice. As in other cases, the symptoms feed the 
disease, as well as indicate it. The deed of violence 
breeds more deeds of violence; anarchy provokes hys- 
teria, and hysteria makes anarchy. The unfounded 
scandal sets a hundred tongues to wagging, and the 
seepage from the gutter reaches a thousand homes. 

The journal for the weak-minded and debased 
makes heroes of those of its class who carry folly over 
into crime. The half-crazy egotist imagines himself 
a regicide, and his neighbor with the clean shirt is his 
oppressor and therefore his natural victim. Usually 
his heart fails him, and his madness spends itself in 
foul words. Sometimes it does not, and the world 
stands aghast. But it is not alone against the Chief 
Magistrate that these thoughts and deeds are directed. 
There are usually others within closer range. There 
is scarcely a man in our country, prominent in any 
way, statesman, banker, merchant, railway manager, 
clergyman, teacher even, that has not, somewhere, his 
would-be Nemesis, some lunatic, with a sensational 
newspaper and a pistol, prepared to take his life. 

The gospel of discontent has no place within our 
Republic. It is true, as has often been said, that dis- 
content is the cause of human progress. It is truer 
still, as Mr. John P. Irish has lately pointed out, that 

264 



THE LESSONS OF THE TRAGEDY 

discontent may be good or bad, according to its rela- 
tion to the individual man. There is a noble discon- 
tent which a man turns against himself. It leads the 
man who fails, to examine his own weaknesses, to 
make the needed repairs in himself, then to take up 
the struggle again. There is a cowardly discontent 
which leads a man to blame all failure on his prosper- 
ous neighbor or on society at large, as if a social sys- 
tem existed apart from the men who make it. This is 
the sort of discontent to which the agitator appeals, 
that finds its stimulus in sensational journalism. It is 
that which feeds the frenzy of the assassin who would 
work revenge on society by destroying its accepted 
head. 

It is not theoretical anarchism or socialism or any 
other ' ' ism ' ' which is responsible for this. Many of 
the gentlest spirits in the world today call themselves 
anarchists, because they look forward to the time when 
personal meekness shall take the place of all statutes. 
The gentle anarchism of the optimistic philosopher is 
not that which confronts us today. It is the anarchy 
of destruction, the hatred of class for class; a hatred 
that rests only on distorted imagination, for, after all 
is said, there are no classes in America. It is the 
hatred imported from the Old World, excited by 
walking delegates whose purpose it is to carry a torch 
through society; a hatred fanned by agitators of what- 
ever sort, unpractical dreamers or conscienceless 
scoundrels, exploited in the newspapers, abetted by 
265 



THE LESSONS OF THE TRAGEDY 

so-called high society with its display of shoddy and 
greed, and intensified by the cold, hard selfishness 
that underlies the power of the trust. All these people, 
monopolists, social leaders, walking delegates, agita- 
tors, sensationalists, dreamers, are alien to our ways, 
outside the scope of our democracy, and enemies to 
good citizenship. 

The real Americans, trying to live their lives in 
their own way, saving a little of their earnings and 
turning the rest into education and enjoyment, have 
many grievances in these days of grasping trusts and 
lawless unions. But of such free Americans our 
country is made. They are the people, not the trusts 
or the unions, nor their sensational go-betweens. This 
is their government, and the government of the people, 
by the people, and for the people shall not perish from 
the earth. This is the people's president — our presi- 
dent — who was killed, and it is ours to avenge him. 

Not by lynch law on a large or small scale may we 
do it; not by anarchy or despotism; not by the de- 
struction of all that call themselves anarchists, not by 
abridging freedom of the press nor by checking free- 
dom of speech. Those who would wreak lawless ven- 
geance on the anarchists are themselves anarchists and 
makers of anarchists. 

We have laws enough already without making 
more for men to break. Let us get a little closer to 
the higher law. Let us respect our own rights and 
those of our neighbor a little better. Let us cease to 

266 



THE LESSONS OF THE TRAGEDY 

tolerate sensational falsehood about our neighbor, or 
vulgar abuse of those in power. If we have bad 
rulers, let us change them peacefully. Let us put an 
end to every form of intimidation, wherever practiced. 
The cause that depends upon hurling rocks or epithets, 
upon clubbing teamsters or derailing trains, cannot be a 
good cause. Even if originally in the right, the act 
of violence puts the partisans of such a cause in the 
wrong. No freeman ever needs to do such things as 
these. For the final meaning of democracy is peace 
on earth, good-will towards men. When we stand for 
justice among ourselves we can demand justice of the 
monopolistic trust. When we attack it with clear 
vision and cool speech we shall find the problem of 
combination for monopoly not greater than any other. 
And large or small, there is but one way for us to- 
meet any problem: to choose wise men, clean men, 
cool men, the best we can secure through our method 
of the ballot, and then to trust the rest in their hands. 
The murder of the president has no direct connection 
with industrial war. Yet there is this connection, that 
all war, industrial or other, loosens the bonds of order, 
destroys mutual respect and trust, gives inspiration to 
anarchy, pushes a foul thought on to a foul word, a 
foul word on to a foul deed. 

We trust now that the worst has come, the foulest 

deed has been committed, that our civil wars may 

stop, not through the victory of one side over the 

other, the trusts or the unions now set off against each 

267 



THE LESSONS OF THE TRAGEDY 

other, but in the victory over both of the American 
people, of the great body of men and women who 
must pay for all, and who are the real sufferers in 
every phase of the struggle. 

Strangulatus pro Republica — slain for the Re- 
public. The lesson is plain. It is for us to take it 
into our daily lives. It is the lesson of peace and 
good-will, the lesson of manliness and godliness. Let 
us take it to ourselves, and our neighbors will take it 
from us. 

All civilized countries are ruled by public opinion. 
If there be a lapse in our civic duties, it is due to a 
lapse in our keenness of vision, our devotion to jus- 
tice. This means a weakening of the individual man, 
the loss of the man himself in the movements of the 
mass. Perhaps the marvelous material development 
of our age, the achievements of the huge cooperation 
which science has made possible, has overshadowed 
the importance of the individual man. If so, we have 
only to reassert ourselves. It is of men, individual 
men, clear-thinking. God-fearing, sound-acting men, 
and of these alone, that great nations can be made. 



268 



XV. 

THE HOPES OF JAPAN. 

OF ALL the lands in the world none other has 
the peculiar fascination of Japan. Others 
have equal beauty of scenery, greater 
grandeur of mountain and shore, more 
noble works of art, more complex problems of society. 
But none other possesses an equal fascination. No 
one who has been in the real Japan which lies outside 
the treaty ports and the foreign hotels and railways ever 
could or ever would forget his experiences. No one, 
if he could, would ever fail to return. One goes out 
each day with the certainty of finding a chain of adven- 
tures, and not one of them dangerous or unpleasant. 
The great secret of the charm of Japan lies with 
the people themselves. They have made a fine art of 
personal relations. Their acts are those of good taste 
and good humor. Two cities of about the same size 
and relative importance are Paris and Tokyo. No two 
could show a greater contrast in spirit. Both are, in 
a sense, cities of pleasure. Tokyo is a city of con- 
tinuous joyousness, little pleasures drawn from simple 
things which leave no sting and draw nothing from 
future happiness. Compared with many of them, the 
game of jackstraws would be wild revelry. Paris is 
269 



THE HOPES OF JAPAN 



feverish and feels the ' ' difference in the morning ' ' 
and the ' ' hard, fierce lust and cruel deed ' ' which go 
with the search for pleasure that draws on the future 
for the joys of the present. 

No one who catches the spirit of Paris can fail to 
miss the underlying sadness, the pity of it all. The 
•spirit of Tokyo — not of all Tokyo, but of its Hfe as a 
whole — is as fresh as the song of birds, as ' ' sweet as chil- 
dren' s prattle is, ' ' and it is good to be under its spell. 

Part of this charm lies in the fair scenery of Japan. 
Great wooded mountains, snowy cones of volcanoes, 
dashing rivers and resting lakes, each dropped into its 
place with a wonderful eye to the picturesque. The 
tall cryptomerias of the central forests rival their sister 
sequoias and redwoods of the California slopes. The 
long-armed pine, Chinese in origin, Japanese by 
adoption (^Pinus thunbergi) , is unique among trees, 
for wherever it grows it stands as if posing for its 
portrait, the center of each scene in which it occurs. 
If there be an island of white ashes in some purple 
bay, there will stand seven pines in a row across it, 
each pointing its long arms in seven different direc- 
tions. On the old royal highway of the feudal days, 
from end to end of Japan, stand long rows of shelter- 
ing pines as old as the dynasty, each with all the 
individuality of one in the series of kings. The great 
pine of Karasaki, on the Lake of Biwa, stretches 
its long arms further, perhaps, than those of any 
other tree whatsoever in any country. 

270 



THE HOPES OF JAPAN 



■ With the scenery goes the wealth of flowers, the 
hum of singing insects, and in early days the song of 
birds, also/' until the soulless Paris milliner and the 
woman with dead warblers on her hat wrought their 
practical extermination. The geography and the his- 
tory of Japan each has its charms as well, and these 
sink deep into the hearts of the Japanese. Every 
' ' moor of the red sedges ' ' was once the scene of a 
great battle. On every mountain pass great deeds 
were wrought. Even though these names and deeds 
have long since passed into mythology, yet they are 
none the less potent to touch the heart of the new as 
well as of the old Japan. From the great central 
mountain axis of the main island rocky promontories 
thrust themselves out across the rice fields far into the 
sea. The warm Kuro Shiwo, or Black Gulf Stream, 
comes up from the Philippines and Formosa and 
washes the crags, Ise and Izu, Kii and Misaki, in 
which these promontories end. In the warm water 
and sultry vapor-laden air is developed the richest 
marine life that dwells on any coast in the whole world. 
And this abundance of life on land and sea by day or 
by night is one of the joys of Japan. 

With the people themselves the virtues of life are 
all closely joined together. The name of Bushido, 
"the warrior's way," means the spirit of honor, the 
way a man should do things, and this honor covers all 
the virtues of sobriety, honesty, hopefulness, patriot- 
ism and religion. It is the heart of Japanese character. 



THE HOPES OF JAPAN 



It makes this character and in turn is created by it. 

The Shinto reHgion, the primitive religion of Japan, 
is often defined as "ancestor worship." It is more 
than this, far more, but it is also less than this. It 
has been called no religion at all, because it has no 
creed, no ceremonies necessary to its practice, no 
sacred legends or mysteries, and nothing of the 
machinery of spiritual power which characterize great 
religions in other countries. It makes no proselytes. 
It opposes no belief and insists on none. It is the 
animating spirit that causes a Japanese to love his chil- 
dren, to be kind to his wife, to help the stranger, to 
be loyal to Japan, to devote his life to her service, 
and, above all, to be worthy of the traditions of his 
ancestry, to be a man, even as his great fathers were, 
and to do no act which is unworthy of his class of 
Samurai, of his education or of his training. 

No other land has better soldiers than the 
Japanese, not because of their strength or endurance, 
for they are a small and feeble folk, but because they 
will obey orders, because they wish to obey, for 
in so doing they do their part in the glory and the 
upbuilding of Japan. The Japanese students belong 
largely to the Samurai class, the old feudal retainers, 
and the feeling of loyalty to Japan is the animating 
spirit in all their studies and in all their work. It is 
the spirit of honor, the Bushido, the warrior's way, the 
religion of Japan. 

So long as the Japanese keeps this feeling he is 

272 



THE HOPES OF JAPAN 



worthy of trust. When he loses his religious spirit, 
his spirit of personal pride, whatever his rank or 
creed, he becomes a degenerate, open to the attacks 
of all the vices. For this reason a Japanese who has 
lost his self-respect and grown careless or indolent is 
one of the least useful of men, and soon sinks to the 
level of the similarly outcast Anglo-Saxon. 

These facts will help us to understand certain criti- 
cisms on Japan. The merchant complains that the 
Japanese have no business head and are careless of 
their contracts. In this connection we may note the 
paradox in the relations of the Japanese and Chinese 
to business methods and to public honesty. The 
Chinese are the business men of the Orient. The 
word of a Chinese is his bond, and his contracts are 
carried out to the letter. In Japan the merchant who 
has miscalculated asks his creditors to pay his debts. 
This same good nature he shows to others, if con- 
ditions are reversed. His sense of good taste is 
stronger than his sense of equity. Yet, while from 
the highest to the lowest the public life of China is 
corrupt, there are few countries on earth so honestly 
governed as Japan. The spirit of honor animates a 
Japanese official, and a public office with him is a 
sacred trust. 

The contractor complains that the Japanese laborer 
is lazy, drunken, overbearing. This is true in a de- 
gree, for only the unemployed, the idle and thriftless 
Japanese are likely to swell the ranks of unskilled or 

273 



THE HOPES OF JAPAN 



contract labor. This vicious system of semi-slavery, 
the social curse and the financial gain of Hawaii, has 
brought under our flag a class of Japanese not useful 
to us and not creditable to Japan. 

The missionary says that Japan is given over to 
materialism, and that Herbert Spencer holds greater 
sway over even the converts to Christianity than the 
church. The man of science notes the preference of 
the Japanese scholar for memorization of words or for 
half-understood abstrusities of philosophy. It is said 
that there is no philosophy in Japan, and into this 
vacuum comes Herbert Spencer. The man of the 
world finds the Japanese immoral, not remembering 
that vice is everywhere near him that seeks it. 

But all these criticisms are skin deep. Under all 
is the great, loyal, generous nation, the embodiment 
of good hope, good taste, and good-will, a people 
who love their homes, their children and their country, 
on whose soil no foreign invader has ever yet set foot. 

The teachers of Tokyo once asked me to speak to 
them on the subject of ' ' What Japan has to learn from 
the educational experience of America. ' ' In response, 
I told them that Japan has to learn the value of indi- 
vidual initiative and individual adequacy, that equity is 
higher than courtesy; that the cure for vice is found 
not in prohibition, but in the strengthening of the 
moral backbone of the individual man; that woman 
must be trained to wisdom if homes are to be the cen- 
ters of culture and purity, and that the final end of 

274 



THE HOPES OF JAPAN 



education is not official promotion, nor personal cul- 
ture, nor the acquisition of knowledge for its own 
sake, but the development of personal effectiveness. 
A man should know the world and his place in it, 
that he may do his part to the best advantage of him- 
self and others. 

But more important than the lessons which I tried 
to emphasize was the spirit with which the lessons 
were received. Eager to learn and eager to make use 
of whatever was new, and behind it all a real prepara- 
tion for new ideas. In my explorations of the natural 
history of Japan, even in the most remote villages, I 
found everywhere men glad to cooperate, with an in- 
telligent comprehension of what I was trying to do. 
As a Japanese friend remarked, this would not be the 
case if Japan were not already a truly civilized country. 

In returning from Northern Japan to the City of 
Sendai, in which, on my way northward, I had been 
most hospitably treated, I received a request from 
the city officers that I would allow them to visit me 
at my room. 

About a dozen of them came, with editors, law- 
yers, teachers and other persons of prominence. 
After the usual compliments, the spokesman said that 
they would like to know from me how they could 
make Sendai a better city. He said that — 

"Japan was like a country boy who had come to 
town and found many things which are new and 
strange. This boy found in America an elder brother, 
275 



THE HOPES OF JAPAN 



who could give true advice and honest help in all the 
difficulties of the new situation. As an American 1 
was welcome to Sendai, and Sendai would like from 
me all the help I might be willing to give." 

After a discussion of what could be done for the 
clean and wholesome town of Sendai to make it even 
more clean and wholesome, he touched on the ques- 
tion of Japanese emigration. He was very sorry that 
the government had allowed men to go out from the 
cities of the Inland Sea to America as contract labor- 
ers. Among these were many bad Japanese, and they 
had produced a bad impression in America. Many 
Americans had come to think that all Japanese were 
like these. But those who, like me, had seen the Jap- 
anese at home knew they were not. The government 
of Japan understands this situation and will let no 
more contract laborers leave the country. Only the 
student, the skilled artisan, the good citizen of Japan 
will be allowed to come to America, and any wish of 
America, if courteously made known to Japan, will be 
fully respected. 

The Japanese everywhere feel toward America a 
peculiar, almost romantic, gratitude. It was America 
who in 1854 first opened Japan to the activities of the 
West, and furnished the occasion for the downfall of 
the outworn feudal system and the dual role of Shogun 
and Mikado. It was America who led in the establish- 
ment of the Japanese school system and the great 
Imperial University at Tokyo. It was America who 

276 



THE HOPES OF JAPAN 



was first willing to allow Japan full jurisdiction in her 
own ports, which had been opened to foreign residence 
and foreign trade. To Japan, America is her nearest 
and best friend among the nations, her guide and 
leader in paths which are new and strange. 

The lesson of the Shimoneseki incident in 1863 has 
never been lost on Japan. Every schoolboy knows it 
and its meaning. Certain ships, Dutch, French and 
American, passing through the Inland Sea, were fired 
on at Shimoneseki. Afterward these, with a British 
ship, bombarded and destroyed the town, collecting at 
the same time $3,000,000 as indemnity, which was 
divided among the Powers. Later investigation 
showed that the blame was not all on one side, and 
the United States returned the $750,000 to Japan. 
This chivalrous act of common courtesy, never known 
before or since among great Powers, at once placed 
the United States in a class apart in dealing with affairs 
in the Orient, When the vulgar politicians of Europe 
whom we call the "Great Powers" ceased nagging 
Japan, outrages and unfriendly feeling passed away. 
The lesson of all this is worth heeding in the great 
tragedy of the vivisection of China. For genuine 
commerce rests on a basis of mutual trust and mutual 
esteem. Trade cannot be built up by force of arms, 
nor are its profits ever great enough to make good 
the cost and waste of a great army. Of all the 
nations of the Orient, Japan is the only one which can 
in truth be called well governed. Japan is the only 

^77 



THE HOPES OF JAPAN 



one which has had undisturbed possession of herself. 
The Japanese choose their own ruler, make their 
own laws, train their own armies, control their own 
trade. They are the only Oriental people free 
from the mighty curse of opium, for they have the 
right to exclude it from their ports. The trade of 
Japan is great and growing. The profits of this trade 
must go to those from whom the Japanese may choose 
to buy. To the end of controlling this trade and 
through it the trade of the Orient to which Japan holds 
the key, we have to offer only fair dealing, personal 
courtesy, and the chivalrous spirit which draws to- 
gether men and nations. 



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